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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
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The motors have never been the problem, it’s always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.
This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.
I hope you are not talking about battery locomotives.
With overhead wires the train has a practically unlimited battery capacity.
There are use cases for battery trains. In remote, mountainous locations where the cost for electrifying a track is very high it is not uncommon to use electric trains with batteries. Here in Germany we have several regions where diesel trains have been replaced by them.
Oil is honestly an amazing product, chemistry wise there is so much we can do with it and energy wise it’s a extremely concentrated and easily transported form of energy.
Energy wise one liter of oil is equivalent to 10 person working for a day !
I repeat, using one liter of oil is like having 10 “slaves” working for us for a day.
Its easy to see why oil became the base of our modern civilization, and easy to see why we don’t manage to stop using it even though it’s destroying us.
pretty sure most trains are powered by either overhead wires or third rails? considering that urban rail systems are always electrified and those have A LOT of trains.
Freight trains are diesel electric.
Not in America
okay? i’m talking about the world though, so typical for people to just assume america is all that matters lmao
The point is about utilization of electric motors, if it happens anywhere on earth it’s possible. You’re trying to insinuate that it isn’t true. And it is. Being American has nothing to do with it you dunce
Not really. Battery tech has always been advancing. Even today electric vehicles have barely come up with anything new, battery wise. Everyone wants something better than lithium base. No one can get anything to market.
Didn’t sodium batteries start getting marketed recently?
Yes, but no one’s even glancing at it for use in vehicles. The one that’s finally getting into production is 70wh/Kg. Not nearly energy dense enough yet for ev’s. Lithium batteries are closer to 300wh/Kg. In other words, they take up 1/4th the space and weight. EV’s are already a thousand pounds heavier than non ev’s and that’s already causing extra tire pollution issues and having to overbuild suspension parts and bearings. Making them another 3,000 pounds heavier than that is just out of the question. Let alone making the space to fit the battery.
Sodium is going to change the world with its power storage capabilities connected to solar. Anyone on like 75% of the planet could 100% live off the electric grid problem free with enough solar panels and a big sodium storage battery.
Wasn’t aware that EVs were already that heavy. Then yeah, I guess that’s definitely not feasible, at least not at the moment.
Yep. A size of vehicle wise comparison would be that a tesla model s sedan weighs around 4,600 pounds. A toyota Corolla weighs around 1,600 pounds less at around 3,000 pounds.
Even the newest and most powerful mass produced American made car ever, the “C8 Corvette Z06” with its big V8 gas engine with 670 horsepower weighs in at around 3,650 pounds.
Exactly this. Imagine if gas powered motor could recharge in mere 12 hours and run for up to half the distance. Ah, that would be the dream.
And if you and 5 of your neighbors decide to refuel at the same time during peak hours you have a real chance of overloading your neighborhood grid. And your fuel tank is dead in 5 years, replacing which is more than half of your used cars cost.
Everything non-portable uses electric motors from the time the first wire was invented.
Boy it sure is easy to win a debate when you use fictional information
I am being serious - can you factually counter those points? I’d like to know the truth of the matter.
Batteries don’t fail after 5 years, for starters. Source: literally any used car site
I can. Electric car batteries last 10+ years, often longer than the body work of the car. Lookup Lithium Iron Phosphate, this has around 5-10x the cycle life of conventional lithium batteries. Combine this with the complex heating and cooling systems, battery and charging management in modern EVs and you have something that lasts as long or longer than even a diesel engine.
Cell phone batteries die quickly because both their construction and the way they are managed favour capacity, cost, and charging speed over longevity. Car battery design is much more focused on longevity by comparison. They are also cycled more often and more completely than most EVs.
Grid issues are a real problem. Cars can be used to make this worse or better depending on how they are deployed. If they are charged during peak energy production from solar they can actually help rather than hurt the grid.
You can also rapid charge a car in like 30 minutes. You don’t need 12 hours.
Thanks, I’m not sure why I was downvoted for asking a legitimate question.
I suspect people just assumed you were the same person who wrote the sarcastic comment before the one you replied to and that you were just being combative
15 minute recharge adds hundreds of miles of range
No, you see, that’s not how it works. The battery needs to be filled to 100%, just like a gas tank. And you should only ever charge once you’re under 10-20%, just like a gas tank (it’s silly to top up every day, that’s just a waste of time). We must be able to exactly replicate the current paradigm for people to be able to adjust.
I drive about 150 miles a week and get gas every couple of weeks. It takes 5 minutes. If I have to go to a charger I’ll be there for hours. It’s absurd.
Tap for /s
/s
Well.
To fully charge a leaf at a public fast charging station takes an hour. https://www.nissanusa.com/experience-nissan/news-and-events/nissan-leaf-charging-101.html
My up! can get about 260 miles out of its 30ish liter tank. That is about 1/3rd more than a new leaf. Hardly half the distance.
The electric grid will be fine. This is not the first time it’s expanded because of new technological demand. And I’ve never heard of 5 EVs overloading the grid.
And if the person above could read they’d see that all of these are battery problems, something the original comment said we should have put our focus improving on long ago.
Edit: I’ll just add that I love my ICE cars as much as the next petrol head, but the future is electric cars for at least daily driving. We’ve pretty much perfected combustion engines at this point. F1 engines sit around 50% thermal efficiency, and we’re not gonna get any meaningful amount above that (but I will be happy if it turns out I’ll have to eat my hat in the future). I just hope petrol engines don’t become banned in the future for the enthusiasts.
When you look at fueleconomy.gov you will see that the furthest a compact ev can go is 149 miles while the furthest a ice compact car can go is 594 miles
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/why-the-ev-boom-could-put-a-major-strain-on-our-power-grid.html You can read cnbcs article on how the grid is already pretty spread thinn with us already increasing our power demand by almost 3,000% in the last decade without even considering ev charging
https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-an-ev/
According to motor trend DC charging is the fastest way to charge your EV and it still takes just under two hours Couldn’t find a source that studied how long a ice takes to recharge but considering how ices are currently extremely common you can easily test that yourself and probably already know it’s so quick you don’t even think about it
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/
According to car and driver those lithium ion batteries you mentioned while yes they can last a decade most cars typically stay on the road for give or take 30-35 years and lithium ion batteries are inherently expensive and prone to thermal cascading ie catching fire also full charge and depletion wears the battery down over time
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-battery-replacement-costs.html According to Edmunds.com the average cost of ev battery replacement costs anywhere from 5,000$ to 15,000$ So what point was made up
You have all kinds of nonsense in your post. Like you limit it to just compact cars for no reason. When you don’t limit it to just compact cars then you get EVs with 516 mile range
And charging a car for 15 minutes gives you hundreds of miles of range
https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
Etc.
If you read comments on Instagram and the like, people hate electric cars because…
…they don’t do the vroom-vroom noise.
I feel like this is directed towards ICE vs EV cars. If that’s the case, it’s sort of frustrating.
EVs have some very real drawbacks. Even if those drawbacks are solvable problems, they are still problems right now. Pushing this narrative that EVs are universally better or that the biggest hurdle to adoption is irrational consumer sentiment will just make people feel gaslit. It’ll also make people more hesitant to adopt later on, because they’ll be skeptical of positive reviews that are honest.
Electric cars is not the solution. Sure, it’s an improvement, but for a real solution you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation. Trains, trams, busses, whatever. Build it in a way that doesn’t suck. Assuming american, the US had (past tense) amazing train/tram networks decades ago. Every warehouse had a rail spur, and since walking was considered ok people weren’t obese fatasses.
I drive a scooter. It is possible to live without a car, although it does have some difficulties sometimes. If your job is within 10 miles of your home or less, then you don’t need a car for your commute. If I can do it so can you. I’d still rather take a bus, if it existed.
Just came back from Tokyo. Tokyo’s public transportation is awesome. You do also need to walk a lot at times and the first few days our legs were quite sore. But towards the end of the trip I can feel my leg strength again, felt healthier, and did not miss my car at all. To go to certain places, you do have to plan a little bit ahead, for example, a day trip out to Mt. Fuji area requires booking tickets because right now there’s a ton of tourists. But within the city, the subways are so convenient.
I’ve lived in a city with really good transit, and even then, I’d prefer a car if it were affordable here.
I drive a scooter.
Friend and coworker of mine was recently in a deadly accident on her way to work on a scooter. Those vehicles are great but on a road that is still primarily built for cars (and is now inhabited by ever more massive giant pickups) it can be a serious safety risk.
you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation
This is really the heart of it. It’s an infrastructure problem. Frustratingly, this is the most difficult and time consuming problem to solve.
TINY ELECTRIC GO CARTS
I want an EV. I think its 98% the right choice for me. I also 100% with you. Cars are a terrible solution at a certain density, which is what most industry and thus where people live makes sense.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view. Sure it’s better to have good public transportation, but in a lot of places there won’t be for the foreseeable future. Sure it’s better to use bicycles, but sometimes it’s just not an option.
Electric cars won’t fix traffic, but for the planet they’re still a vast improvement. It’s like a viable 95% solution that is dismissed because there might a 100% one somewhere in the next 200 years.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view.
Not it isn’t. Every single individual person who decides to live without a car is an improvement. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
I think they were trying to say that every individual who uses their car less is an improvement.
I live outside Boston, which has among the best transit in the US but it doesn’t take me everywhere. My town is quite walkable but also hilly and with weather. I do choose to walk, or ride the train when I can, but I still need a car. Improving this enough for most prople to dispense with cars will be a very long time. In the meantime, my use of EV, walk, train is a huge improvement of my brother in the Midwest using ICE car for everything
My job is within 10mi of my home. If I walk there, I get there in 2 hours. If I take public transportation, it takes me 1h45m to 2h20m depending on the day.
I also live in a community where our electricity is from 90% renewable resources, 10% nuclear. Switching to an electric car is a 100% reduction in carbon usage for my commute. Using the bus isn’t.
Why not get an electric bike then? Reasonable price tag, will get you to work within a reasonable timeframe, significantly less congestion on roads, and charges with that renewable energy without using a lot of it.
Also, their point was that adding infrastructure for public transport (aka improving the public transport you’re complaining about) will have a huge effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across a population and is more easily electrified. Your focus on an individual case is irrelevant to their argument.
Removed by mod
Because building non renewable power doesn’t have a carbon cost right? And buying a petrol powered car doesn’t have a carbon cost, right?
I’m talking about my commute. The carbon cost of driving to work from my home.
Don’t strawman if you want your argument to be taken seriously - because what I read above translates to
Idk why ppl are down voting this, bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Ig it’s all the insecure pickup truck bros
Edit: typos
I think people (not me, I agree with glitchdx, overall) are probably down voting because it’s a classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, with a healthy dose of smug mixed in. Smugness is a great dialectical tactic if you hope to entrench people deeper into their views, rather than convince them to consider alternatives through reasoned discussion.
Do I agree that ideally we’d have robust public transit and increased usage of smaller, greener personal transport solutions? Of course I do.
But, incrementalism is progress. Valuable progress. We could argue whether it’s more likely to get us to the aforementioned vision of robust public transit or not, but history has proven time and time again that progress takes time and is resisted tooth and nail by monied interests. I don’t like it either. I want to wave a wand and have everything change. OP is right. Electric cars are not the solution. But treating symptoms while you work on curing the disease is best practice.
bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Seems to me that bro is arguing against EVs when that may be the best choice in an individuals control. Even if we’re all for public transportation, that takes years and millions to improve, so EVs may be the best choice available for the time being
Not everyone lives where public transportation is really feasible. He’ll EVs aren’t even practical where I live.
So we shouldn’t bother with it anywhere then?
You’re missing the forest for the trees
I never said that, thanks for speaking for me I really appreciate it though. I am simply saying moving away from ICE just isn’t feasible everywhere right now.
I would absolutely love to have an EV. But they are very expensive, especially compared to the gas-powered car I already own.
But remember, electric motors also require next to no maintenance and can last for many years of runtime. Pros and cons.
And no gearing, so no complex moving part assemblies…
Unfortunately, brushless motors are also trivial to waterproof.
Uh, maintenance is one thing where ICE wins (until very recently, thanks fucktards in car industry). Cars have been generally very easy to work on, with anyone with a toolbox being able to do most their repairs in a shed
That’s a user-hostile feature, not a property of electric engines. An electric car has far simpler mechanical parts, and the circuitry isn’t very complicated either. It could be made incredibly easy to repair, modify, and upgrade, mostly at home even, if they designed them that way
This isn’t a function of the engine though right? Electric engines are inherently simpler and should therefore be easier to maintain (putting aside company fuckery)
High voltage is scary as fuck, but also the fact that absolutely everything from doors to gas pedal and chairs are controlled by a computer you need specialized proprietary equipment to investigate.
This is an issue with new ice cars too to be honest
EVs have a High voltage disconnect. I repaired my EV(inverter) with normal hand tools in my garage. I did have to buy a license and tool for flashing the firmware, but this is a problem in nearly every new vehicle, gas or electric.
That’s true. But since now it’s all messed up shit that you can’t fix yourself they’re on fairly equal line there.
This comic is clearly about lawn mowers people. Who discusses cars when wearing a hat like that?
Definitely stovetops
I do love how much torque my electric stove can put out while stopped
The price. The price is the problem for all us poors.
“On the other hand gas has a much higher energy density than batteries and a much faster refuel rate.”
It’s exactly this. Convenience. We’ve become accustomed to how convenient it is and don’t want to be put out.
On the other hand, it’s super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank. So if you drive less than 60 miles a day, and have acess to another car for long trips, an electric is even more convenient.
That’s basically 90% of every car owner.
It’s one of those things where people feel like they’re going to take a road trip every weekend, but most people are just using their car to commute to and from work and maybe take one or two longer trips per year. The time saved by not having to stop at a gas station throughout the the year is less than the additional time taken at a fast charging station for the rare road trip.
It’s wild how little you end up actually needing more than 50 mi range. Even in a spread out California city, I rare use the ICE in my Volt
Unfortunately, people tend to buy vehicles to best accomplish 1% of their driving. I live in the suburbs and almost every house has a giant pickup parked in front. Not because people are in the construction business and need to haul a lot of stuff, but because once a year they might go to Home Depot and it feels good to put their two bags of mulch in the back.
Part of the problem is not having the money or space for an extra vehicle.
I drive an SUV, I don’t particularly like driving an SUV, I get a lot of use out of having a larger vehicle, I’m an avid DIYer who makes frequent trips to the hardware store to pick up lumber and such, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies and usually end up being the one who drives so I’m carrying gear for several people, I don’t exactly go off roading, but those hobbies sometimes take me on some poorly maintained, deeply rutted, muddy roads and 4wd has gotten me out of some jams, I occasionally drive onto the beach to go fishing, usually find myself towing a small trailer a couple times a year, and I’m an essential employee that lives in an area that gets snow with a weird schedule that usually has me commuting before the snow plows have gotten through everywhere.
But even though I probably get more actual use out of an SUV than most people, most often I’m still only driving about 20 miles or less a day, on paved roads, in weather that doesn’t require anything more than working headlights, wipers, and tires that aren’t totally bald.
If I had the budget and parking space I’d probably have the cheapest base model EV I could find for most of my commuting and small errands and save the SUV for my days off and when it snows. That’s not the case though.
If they use a camper or heavy trailer even four times per year, fine whatever keep your truck. The other millions of Americans should’ve just rented a vehicle when they needed it, and it would’ve been far cheaper and more convenient to have their daily driver as a regular sized sedan.
But 100% of the time they feel like they’ve got big ‘ole balls.
Or just use the clothes dryer circuit… Charge the car overnight… Get all the range.
You don’t even need the clothes dryer circuit, the vast majority of people don’t drive enough in a day to need anything more than a standard 15a outlet
Tech Connections showed this pretty well.
it’s super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank
But, to make that possible, you basically have to have a “gas station” at home. If you own your own house you can modify it to install a charging spot. If you rent, you might not have that option.
All EVs come with Level 1 chargers that plug in to your standard house outlet, NEMA 5-15R. If there’s an outlet nearby you can charge your car.
That can still be difficult for apartment renters, but there’s no need to modify your house.
All EVs come with Level 1 chargers that plug in to your standard house outlet.
Sure, but if you use those it takes a very long time to charge. Like, from empty it can take 40+ hours to charge a battery EV from empty to 80%. If you’re using your car to commute and your commute is anywhere near the max range of your car, that isn’t a viable option.
If you don’t drive for work–and I mean get paid to drive hundreds of miles every day, not just a long commute–or take a road trip every month, and have a place to charge at night (most people do, at least in North America), then an EV is just better.
Otherwise, a plug-in hybrid or a “gasoline boosted EV” like a Volt is sufficient. ICE cars for regular people shouldn’t have even existed once the Volt proof of concept was proven!
On the one hand the Nokia 3310’s battery lasts a week. On the other hand the iPhone 15…
Just plug your car in when you’re not using it like you’d charge your phone overnight. It’s only a problem if you can’t charge at home (due to on street parking and no charging facilities on that street) and you can’t charge somewhere you usually take your car (eg a workplace).
Nope,it’s a problem in many other scenarios
If i ride to vacation to a country with no charging infrastucture, if I want to ride to the mountains where it is subzero and my range drops dramatically, if I go to a place where it’s 38 deree celsius and I need AC my range is pretty much fucked up… (not to mention that close to remote places like cool beaches there is no charging station)
If I want to have a road trip… i suddenly becomes a planning issue
There are still so many things that are complicated by having a EV, and I don’t need the extra complications
Dude…
Norway is incredibly sparsely populated and has an adoption rate of 80%+. We also have stupid cold winters, loads of fucking mountains and require AC in summer.
I’ve driven through Europe twice with no more than 2 minutes of planning in an app.Your comment makes me think you have no experience with EV’s at all and are spreding false claims.
There are literally two scenarios where an EV is not better than ICE (if purchased new today).
One is for people frequently traveling far beyond the cars range and the other is for people without access to AC charging at all.
And no, I’m not a EV lover/gasoline hater. I ride a motorcycle powered by dinosaur juice too. I just like having 400+ BHP and 700 Nm of torque in a car priced like a Toyota Avensis, and a full tank every single time I leave my driveway with said full tank costing me <$5.
You should want that too unless you belong to one of the two exeption groups above.
My issue with EVs isn’t the EV itself, it’s that they’re all smart cars. Granted, most new ICE cars are being overladen with bull shit too so I think I’m just stuck with cars from the 2010s.
That is a perfectly reasonable argument.
Is it because of costly repairs down the line or potentially being spied on you dislike?
Personally I quite enjoy the newer features for safety and usage, but I get wanting stuff that is simpler to wrench on.
Both tbh. I also just don’t like the usability and looks of everything being a screen. I really hate digital dashboards. The newer cars feel like they were designed to be disposable like a smart phone, where long term use isn’t a consideration.
I have seen some services that convert ICE cars to EV, so I may just do that when my engine needs replaced
The reason I single out the 2010s is because that’s when I could get a touch screen with car play, but still have HVAC controls as a button and no digital dashboards.
So you agree that we should heavily invest in building EV charging infrastructure?
We should slowly invest and push for transition, but the current status quo is for early adopters and enthusiasts IMO
Are those two things actually important?
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.
Plus the technology to battery swap is well in use for electric vehicles (see Nio, who have thousands of battery swap stations in China and some in Europe too). 3 mins and you have a full battery.
Are those two things actually important?
For some people? Absolutely.
Yes, for people who can’t charge at home. I’d love to swap to electric, but 1 hour trip to go charge the car at the nearest charging station is not realistic - especially since I’d need to do it twice as often as 10min trip to refuel.
Also there’s the EV prices, starting at 2-3 times more than my current whip lol
My point is that we should be focused on the outcomes we want. It isn’t really important that fossil fuels are a lot more energy dense if the electric cars can travel twice as far. They can’t, but I’d be willing to bet we will get to that point with fossil fuels still being more energy dense.
But also as I mentioned in the comment you relied to, Nio have a vast network of battery swap stations where you can get a full charge in a couple of minutes, the same as filling up at a gas station.
The price of EVs are a problem, and not the only problem, but my point was that the specific things mentioned don’t stop us having better EVs than ICEs, because we will get the same outcome in a different way.
I absolutely agree that we should work on improving EVs, charging network and whatever technologies makes it better and more suitable for more people. But every person in need of a car has unique hard requirements for the car that can’t be ignored as “inconvenience” - and many of those people have to drive with fossil fuels still.
Also, battery swap stations being available in X location doesn’t matter to people living in Y location, nor should people in Y location buy EV in hopes that it will be better in Z years
Are those two things actually important?
yes, they are. they make difference between actually usable technology and engineer’s dream.
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
i doubt we even have enough rare metals for 8 or 16 billion batteries. most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.
efficiency matters, it is not a question of how good single battery is.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.
oh good. YOU have it solved, so the rest of the world does not matter, i assume…? fuck all these people, right?
It matters to people who drive more during the day than their range allows. They don’t want to wait 20 minutes for the car to charge every time they venture 300km out and back /s
Why do people still pretend it takes longer than 20 minutes to get a 50% charge increase?
Because it’s currently easier to find a gas station than a charger that will do that performance. Now I’m willing to wait 8 hrs for 10%, but others certainly aren’t.
You must live in a red state or the middle of nowhere. It’s easy to find chargers everywhere I’ve been.
My parents live in the sticks, in a red state, and I have no problem finding charging stations within twenty miles from them.
Yes, my point. I have to charge my car at home because of charging stations are either far, or Tesla owners park in them to do shopping.
Saying I live somewhere shit doesn’t disprove my point that gas is more readily available.
Yeah because the conservative government of those areas is actively suppressing them from being built.
Wait, I’m confused (out of date??) I thought it took hours to charge. Has that changed?
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I don’t have enough charge for my trip. I’m also thirsty.
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I go to a grocery store with a fast charger.
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I buy a drink.
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I have enough charge.
If it’s a long trip where I need more charge, I choose a car snack, and I’ll have enough.
If I’m on an actual long car trip and I want to charge all the way from the warning light to 100%, I will need to eat a meal anyway. I just find a McDonald’s/cafe,/restaurant/whatever with a fast charger, and it’ll be full before I’m done.
But finding a store/eating place with a fast charger is still waaaay less convenient than just finding a place where I can get diesel in seconds, and find a different place to get drinks/food/snacks.
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Most cars will charge to 80% pretty fast. 20%-70% is really fast on most.
fast charging on modern HV battery packs will get you to 80% from 0 in like 15-20 minutes. I’ve seen lower, but it’s really fucking usable now.
Why /s? Road trips are a thing, and you’d be hard pressed to find a combo restaurant/charging station that’s along your path.
restaurant/charging station combo
The people providing the charging infrastructure here haven’t figured out this important point yet. Gas stations are a terrible place to put chargers, no one wants to stop at a gas station for fifteen minutes to an hour at a time. Charging stations need to be in places people will be stopping anyway, or at the very least places that provide something to do while waiting. Restaurants, shopping centres, tourist traps, whatever.
Here it’s exacerbated by the fact that the fastest chargers we have only deliver about 60kW. Not even close to the 200+ some EVs need to get the fast charging times they advertise. But that 60kW would be perfectly fine if I could spend the time in a restaurant instead of standing around at a gas bar in the middle of nowhere.
Hell, even cheap (or free) “level 2” chargers outside restaurants and shopping malls would be a huge help.
I live in Denmark, here the chargers are placed where people park anyway. Grocery stores, parking lots, rest stops…
It’s getting so easy to find a fast charger/resto combo, that we don’t even plan it from home.
I’ve seen few 200+ watts chargers without looking for them, but the car is ready faster than I am anyway.
I’m so glad here in Germany they do that more often now. We have a quite a few large charging parks next to restaurants and bakeries. I just made a 9 hour trip to Denmark and it was a pretty nice experience overall. Only downside is you have to plan ahead if you want this convenience because the majority is still spots with 1-2 occupied chargers at some ugly, smelly Autobahn rest area.
Road trips are a tiny fraction of all vehicle use, it’s fine to relegate them to specialty vehicles.
Quick Google says a great majority of Americans take road trips. Even though it’s a tiny fraction of their driving, it’s still a deciding factor for many when choosing a car. Not all people have the luxury of affording a second car just for road trips.
Public transportation would be good, but there’s less flexibility to it. For example, just yesterday, on a return from a roadtrip, I got stomach sick and had to request frequent stops. That wouldn’t fly on a train.
I’d love it if we had affordable and flexible public transport for getting all across the country, though.
I take road trips in my EV. It’s fine. You get to pee and walk the dog. The extra time isn’t much and it’s actually way more relaxing
It’s weird how defensive people get over their cannonball road trips. It’s great to take a few minutes on a break while taking a long trip.
Unless you’re taking road trips literally every other week you could just rent a gas vehicle when it’s time for a road trip. Rather than make the decision of the car you’re going to drive every single day based on something you only do maybe once a year.
It’s why I don’t own a pickup truck, I actually do haul cars, help people move and all that shit that people say is why they need a pickup truck but I just go to fucking U-Haul and rent either the Sprinter van or the pickup truck for 30 bucks plus mileage when I need one. And I do actually keep track of my financial records with a double Ledger Finance app I just went and looked and I’m still nowhere near the cost of a used pickup truck from all of that renting
Take road trips how often? Once a year? Maybe twice?
Yeah, but road trips can be expensive. Suppose you want to go from Harrisburg PA to Rockford IL with 2 adults and 1 teenager from November 15 to 22.
- By car that’s about 1500 miles. An average car gets 21 mpg, so that’s about 71 gallons. Gas is around $3.5 per gallon, so the trip costs about $250 in gas. You’ll need a hotel. I picked a random one in Ohio. $110 for the way up, $185 for the way back. I guess that’s a Thanksgiving price hike. $545 total.
- By train, let’s say Amtrak because that came up first. $438 up, and that includes boarding a train at midnight and sleeping on the train, and then riding a bus from Chicago to Rockford for 2 hours. $483 back down, and this time when you sleep on the train you have to wake up by 5 AM to get off. Also this is coach class, and those seats aren’t great for sleeping. At least you don’t need a hotel. $921 total.
- By plane, it’s $650 round trip, simple as, but you have to leave at 6 AM on the way up and 5 AM on the way back. It can cost $200 more to get a more convenient time, but let’s assume you’re going for economy alone. $650 total.
That’s not accounting for food prices along the way. That could bring the car ride up to the same price as the plane if you don’t pack food, but if you’re spending extra on convenience there, you’re probably willing to spend extra for convenience on the plane too.
So it’s probably safe to say that, for this group, the car saves about $100 per year, but helping to protect the environment is worth that price. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the flexibility and ease of planning on a car. For a bigger family, cars would be a way better option, and for a family without kids or a lone traveler, planes are the way better option. Trains are right out.
Although own an electric car, I believe range is still an issue. I was specifically addressing fuel density and charging time. EVs have their issues, but I believe they will be solved over time even though they are unlikely to beat an ICE in fuel density or charge rate for a long time. But I don’t think those things are actually important, because the problem is solved in a different way.
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).
Do we ignore fuel distribution costs? How much fuel is required to distribute fuel to the stations? Shipping oil from high-conflict areas?
Electric is stipl very much problematic, with the coal burning. But at least it has a lot of headroom to improve, and can be produced locally.
Oh, and my fucking lungs mate.
Thing is that pound of gas is gone, that pound of battery is still there and ready for recharge.
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.
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.
But solar panel costs are falling way faster than battery costs.
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.
Density is relative to efficiency, and electric wins
What i cannot understand is people trying to defend something that is clearly worse,
Googling tells me that:
- Electric cars have 77% efficiency
- Gas cars have 30% efficiency
- 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.
Technically empty batteries weigh less than charged batteries.
Not that the difference is significant enough to tip the scale though.
How do you think about hydrogen cars? They have better fuel density, and hydrogen is renewable.
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.
The reason I’m pretty much undecided about EVs is the rare metals in the batteries. The pollution by gathering and the inhumane treatment of the workers who extract these resources. I’m still hoping for better alternatives in the energy storage medium
Actually, piston engines are really bad a torque. It’s why they need a flywheel or a large amount of pistons.
Is this a joke I’m not getting, or just a statement?
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.
Yeah, all those poors that can’t afford an electric car are pieces of shit
Literally no one said that
Only problem is getting dense enough power storage.
He is not wrong, but he is not adressing the actual criticism of electric vehicles, so it is kind of pointless.
And what exactly is the criticism of electric vehicles according to you?
They still are…cars. We don’t need no more cars on our streets. Yeah, they could help to replace some old combustion cars but they still are worse than public transport and bicycles.
I think people should consider an EV when it comes time for them to buy a new car.
I think most people should buy used cars, if only because new cars are almost always a bad financial decision
New-to-them I mean, but yes, I agree. New cars depreciate stupidly quick.
We found the Dad with 4 kids that works 50 km from home. Get that man a bicycle.
you think too American!
Some of us are Americans and have to live with these constraints…
And some of us aren’t :) the meme is globally speaking.
I’m all for efficient public transports in downtown, I use them daily myself, but people on suburbs won’t really see a benefit to this.
On the other hand, just switching to electric is a nice start, otherwise we won’t be able to live much longer.
Especially people in suburbs would benefit from public transport and suburbs built for walk ability and cycling.
That’s the problem, only switching the transportation method isn’t enough, there’s a whole infrastructure behind that needs to be built.
In most city centers you can kinda refurbish pre-existing systems, but in suburbs you need to build from scratch, and the distances are way bigger which imposes another challenge.
Don’t get me wrong, im all for it, but we need to acknowledge these problems first.
Suburbs are intentionally designed to not be walkable.
To get to the neighbor behind my house, without cutting anybody’s yard, I have to walk about a mile. We aren’t far. His daughters play with my sons through our shared fence.
And that’s a modest example. Plenty of cul de sacs that are “close” to the main street, as a crow flies but a lot further if you’re an East Asian Chinchilla Monkey running as fast as you can.
Love it or hate it, they aren’t intentionally designed not to be walkable, they’re intentionally designed to discourage traffic from driving through them.
The reason communities like yours and the one behind your house aren’t connected is to reduce the amount of cars driving down your block. To make it safer for your kids to play outside.
Are you sure that the rules here allow reasonable comments like this?
Correct. It can be done though. Getting stores and stuff into suburbs would help already, assuming we’re talking us style ones.
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
Different for many people. For us it is that we live in an urban area parking on the street and charging it, even with the faster chargers nowadays, just doesn’t fit into our schedule. We’d have to cut working hours if we’d want to get an EV. But other people have other problems with them
Luckily me and the children can completly get around by public transportation, scooters and bicycles. My wife cannot (for now at least). So, at least we only have one car for the 4 ouf us.
But I already know that you’ll belittle out problems and come up with half assed solution (yes I know we can charge while shopping, but we walk to the supermarket). I had this discussion often with EV fanatics. Please spare me.
“I can’t charge at home” should be an easy way to shut down an EV evangelist. That should be a “get out of conversation free” card.
I say that as an EV evangelist myself, and I lived a few years in a condo with an EV and no EV charging in the garage (and adding charging was going to be cost prohibitive if even possible at all due to already crowded infrastructure). It sucked and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Even being unable to charge at home has solutions.
Like when they upgraded the street lights in London to LED, while also incorporating a charger.
Yeah, but that is only in London and only 1300 street lights. Once they’ve done 10+ million of those in the whole of the UK this might get interesting. And it will still be much more expensive to habe an EV for people who cannot charge at home.
Sadly they haven’t even started with that here in Germany. And tbh, I am quite annoyed by this. They keep blowing money into the assess of suburbanites, but completly ignore urban people. Thus subsidizing infrastructure wasting sprawling even more.
As the owner of a Bolt, the only significant criticism is range (mine’s a 2020, gets ~180mi comfortably on the interstate) and charging rate (2020 bolts are limited to 50 kW, so kinda specific). Not great for road trips, but otherwise fantastic. As for electric fires… yeah I wasn’t gonna be able to put that out anyway so the firefolk have it either way.
That is more of a criticism of the Bolt.
There are other electric cars on the market that get 2 ton3 times the range and 4 or 5 times the charging rate.
If you charge at home, it is already possible to have an electric vehicle where “refueling” is something you just don’t worry about 98% of the time. You just drive and the car goes as far as you want to go before you get home again. For longer trips, charging can happen in as little time as it takes to grab a bite, hit the washroom, and stretch your legs. You often have multiple charge stations to choose from so it is easy to pick one next to the amenities you want ( like food ).
Range anxiety” is becoming more something you need to worry about in your gas vehicle if you let the tank get low and are about to get on a highway where the next station is not for a while.
It is, definitely. We own our home and leave it on the level 1 charger all the time. It gets us around the metro just fine, no long commutes so it’s great for us. And as someone mentioned somewhere around here, a longer charge time isn’t necessarily bad if you’re the only driver on long trips. I’m honestly more worried about having to stop in areas with only a couple chargers (Midwest here) and some asshole vandalizing them and leaving me stranded. But that’s a concern that pops up once or twice a year at best. And the various charger apps are pretty good a letting you know they’re down.
I do the same, metro commuting and a short trip to visit family (~50 miles each way) every couple weeks or so. I don’t even have to plug in every time I get home, I only need to make sure I am charged up at least to 75% for the family visit. Level 1 charging is more than sufficient, I’ve only ever used a charging station just to see what it’s like and try to use up some credit I got for them through my dealership.
For those without EVs: level 1 charging is just plugging into a standard 120V outlet. I have no special equipment at home, though I did need to confirm my breaker could handle it. For my 2023 Bolt EUV I charge about 1% per hour on the reduced charge setting (8 amps). If I do need to charge a little faster I can swap it to 12 amps, but I typically don’t need to do that.
Yeah I rented a Mustang Mach-E and drove between Houston, Austin, Dallas, and back to Houston, without very much charger anxiety. And not being confined to a slow charger…except on the way back to the airport. The first charger I found was a slow charger and all the fast ones were occupied. But still had plenty of charge to find the next station and get it high enough to return
If an electric car catches on fire you can’t put it out.
I live in a city where electric vehicles are at least 10% of the cars on the road. I have yet to see an electric vehicle fire, even on the news.
You are accurate. What are the practical consequences?
Gas station fires are devastating. I have not seen one of those locally either so I am not selling my gas guzzler to prevent gas station fires. There are bigger problems.
I have yet to see an electric vehicle fire, even on the news.
100% and you know the first time it happens is going to be super covered too because of the potential for “controversy”.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing they rarely catch fire compared to combustion engine cars then.
Source?
Etc etc
Interesting, just read the guardian article, I do think that probably if the ICE fires are less reported that does mean their less bad. But regardless yeah, that is interesting
That’s true for a petrol or a diesel vehicle too.
I’m certain that I won’t be able to put out an ice engine either. That’s fire people territory and I trust them to know their business.
Only thing stopping me having one is cost.
For me it’s cost and having a place to charge since I rent.
The cost, the fact that I don’t have a parking space at my apartment, and the fact that insurance is expensive.
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
Sounds good until you have to replace the battery. I want one of the rivian rts but they are still too pricy even used.
