I want an EV to be more reliable and save me more money in the long run. EVs start out ~10k more than the Corolla most people should buying. They then compromise the long term reliability and maintenance cost with high tech gee whiz features. I’d sooner have manual roll up windows than touch screen controlled air vents. When you integrate sensors and software controls into every little thing, we know those things will start failing and your intricate and overly proprietary systems will be expensive to repair. Their marketing says the electric motor will run longer, but a Toyota is already dead reliable for 300k miles and the bits in the cabin will last without repairs too. ICE cars are so reliable I don’t think anyone in my extended family has spent over $1k fixing them in any single year, with most years just the cost of an oil change.
That is one of the issues for me. Plus, the only viable EV now for me is Tesla, but they keep making silly decisions and are just an odd automaker.
By silly decisions I mean things like removal of turn signal stalk, removal of parking sensors, lack of a gauge in field of view(y, 3), etc.
I love ability to buy online.
I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.
The cost of a replacement battery is astronomical. I can replace an engine in an ICE vehicle for $2k.
It also appears that Tesla is more expensive to insure.
The batteries have an 8 year warranty, by which point it will be cheaper to replace them. You probably won’t have to since NMC batteries will last 1,000 cycles x 200 miles = 200,000 miles. LFP batteries will be 3x that.
Edit: not sure why this is attracting downvotes
Here is proof of the 8 year warranty:
> 8 years or 100,000 miles
( Note: I chose to quote the lowest mileage to avoid controversy )
> A key advantage of LFP is its longer life cycle, resulting in less degradation concerns. LFP packs are capable of more than 3000 full recharge cycle counts compared to NMC at around 1000 to 2000 cycles.
I'm willing to accept that motive batteries will be less expensive in general in the future because of market expansion etc. But does that really mean motive batteries for a specific vehicle will be less expensive?
People in comments are always talking about replacing individual cells from packs, but I don't think that's actually a common service now, and labor and support considerations may not make it a real option either.
(Battery wear seems to be a lot less than people expect as well, more data would be great, but I don't know if that's likely to appear.)
> Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected
> Goldman Sachs Research now expects battery prices to fall to $99 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage capacity by 2025 — a 40% decrease from 2022 (the previous forecast was for a 33% decline).
Again, this doesn't mean consumers will actually get cheaper batteries. Musk himself was promising $5k-$7k battery replacement, yet we saw a price increase.
If we reached Musk's promised numbers then battery replacement would no longer be an issue for me, but when we are talking $15k-$20k then something like a model 3 is scrap for me at 100k+ miles.
Again? Not sure what that means. As for 100k miles - there are cars over that now. Tesla aren’t the only game in town, and BYD is ready to eat their lunch. Competition will drive prices down.
just how cheap do you expect that to get to? right now a model s has a 90kwh battery... that's almost 9 grand to replace in 2025. there will be a floor to this and i don't think it's going to be that cheap. gm et. al. are looking into 200kwh batteries reasonably soon. that's almost 20 grand to replace or the cost of a small ICE car.
The smart money expects a Moore’s Law kind of curve here for quite some time going forward, given the economies of scale and powerful incentives.
There will be more variability than with Moore’s Law because the raw materials are more expensive, it’s not just about building a fab and then amortizing over billions of parts.
Expect a rough annual decrease of 5-15% in $/kWh for some time. We continue to find new chemistries and electrod materials that bring prices down.
Will there eventually be a floor? Yes, for sure. But we’re not there yet.
The problem here is the retail price on things does not really drop.
using a Laptop as an example, prices of Laptops go UP every year, their price / performance ratio may improve...
So in this example if your 300 Mile range battery costs $15,000 today you may be able to get a 600 mile range battery for $15,000 in the future but you will unlikely be able to buy a 300 mile range battery for $8,000
In inflation-adjusted terms the retail prices of things absolutely do drop.
Sure, Tesla might choose to only sell a 600-mile range battery for $15k instead of the 300-mile range battery for $8k. But if there’s a market for a 300-mile vehicle that costs $7k less, and that vehicle can be profitably produced, then it will very likely exist.
You wouldn’t, that’s not my argument. People talk about the cost of replacing the battery at today’s prices, but in reality you’d be paying the future price. Given the 8 year warranty, expected 200,000 - 600,000 mile* lifetime [0] and the rapid decline [1] of battery prices, most people would never need to replace the battery and if they did, it would be in a future where they are cheaper.
> A key advantage of LFP is its longer life cycle, resulting in less degradation concerns. LFP packs are capable of more than 3000 full recharge cycle counts compared to NMC at around 1000 to 2000 cycles.
* Assume 200 miles of range on one charge at 1,000 cycles for NMC, intentionally lower to avoid controversy.
Ah, sorry I misunderstood and I think we agree nearly completely. However, while I'm a fan of LFP, especially for UPSes, for cars it's a delicate balance of lower energy density vs longevity. What I can say is the the Li-Ion in my car have held up much better than expected, but I'm also babying them to the extreme, only rarely charge beyond 80% and rarely supercharging. At this point I fully expect to keep my car for 15+ years and never replace the battery.
LFP batteries are definitely becoming more prevalent. The standard range Teslas in some regions come with them. As you said, NMC should limit the charging to 80% for daily use.
Interestingly for LFP the recommended is 100% so that actually means that a standard range LFP Model Y can get more miles at 100% than the long range can at 80% for daily driving. There’s not much in it but it still feels weird!
The reason LFPs are becoming more prevalent is because LFPs have worse range but are cheaper, and we've reached the tail-end of the cost-vs-range bell curve. Or to put it another way, buyers are much more sensitive to 100miles vs 200miles, than they are 300 miles vs 400 miles. OEMs just don't need the extra range, not if it increases the pricetag.
It also does wonders for the supply chain - the N in NMC stands for Nickel, and most Nickel comes from Russia. The C stands for Cobalt, for that matter.
And (no joke) the word Cobalt comes from the belief that Kobolds were defending Saxon silver mines with toxic minerals. We've known for a long time that Cobalt compounds are pretty toxic to miners.
>> LFP batteries are definitely becoming more prevalen. The standard range Teslas in some regions come with them. <<
LFP batteries are fine (but barely) for entry-level, low-range EVs, or stationary energy storage systems (aka, ESS).
>> As you said, NMC should limit the charging to 80% for daily use. <<
All lithium ion batteries, including LFP, suffers accelerated degradation under high SOC, high C-rates; or in LFP's case, extreme temperature.
>> Interestingly for LFP the recommended is 100% so that actually means that a standard range LFP Model Y can get more miles <<
That 100% SOC charging causes a lot of wear and tear in LFP batteries, but it is still required to recalibrate the BMS to avoid misreading of SOC/range and other associated problems such as cell imbalancing issues. According to Cleanerwatt reports Oct 22, 2022, as a result of 100% charging:
Tesla LFP Battery 10% RANGE LOSS PROBLEM? | Model 3 RWD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suw20wPrbL0
The brand new LFP batteries will degrade substantially quicker. There's not long-term retention data for LFP batteries on the market yet, but the trend tends to be substantially faster degradation. Trends show them stabilizing around that 10% degradation mark in about half the time as non-LFP batteries - around 50,000 miles instead of 100,000 miles."
There is no long-term data yet, though BYD has been making/using much smaller LFP battery packs in their EVs since 2009, but these LFP packs aren't likely to last anywhere near what many LFP faithfuls blindly believe they would last.
The main driver behind LFP's popularity is the cost, especially during the past 2-3 years of COVID-19 which wrecked havoc in the auto supply-chain and inflated prices. China under their massive state subsidy and protectionism (banning foreign battery competitors and cutting all subsidies to EVs with their batteries since 2015) was able to mass-produce them at scale as LFP's share of EV market went from 2% in 2020 to 30% in 2022. China is also very much behind LFP because their ability to export EVs is limited by the fact that other leading battery chemistries such as NCM/NCA are largely guarded by the Japanese and the Korean battery makers -- China ensured that they couldn't get ahead in their domestic market by banning their business very early on and cutting all subsidies to EV with foreign batteries or since 2015 under Made-In-China 2025.
Otherwise, LFP is really a cheap, inferior battery chemistry for EVs.
If this argument were true:
(A) a Prius replacement battery with now dinosaur NiMH tech would have fallen from $4k new to nothing.
(B) any existing hybrid / EV would be getting bonkers range improvements w/ updated cell technology.
The best analogy I can think of:
a battery cell / chemistry (akin to standardized RAM) is not equal to a battery pack (similar to a motherboard with soldered RAM).
For a variety of reasons (consumer preference, automaker greed?), unlike a bus / plane, a modern automobile is engineered to last 5 - 10 years (200k - 400k miles). The entire industry is predicated on selling new vehicles (much like smartphones, or computers) = no mainstream automaker is going to invest in building, testing, and then certifying a new battery pack to take advantage of new chemistry. You might cite Tesla's work on the Roadster as an example, but I'd argue this is an exception (a sendoff for their original halo car) rather than the norm.
& until we have a vehicle with enough scale, there exists no incentive for aftermarket to invest in building a new pack for a specific car. You could also argue, (& I'll concede) that Model 3 / Model Y might be the first car at scale to attract such investment – although I have doubts given (A) the barrier to entry for a pack is higher than a rando ICE part (e.g. would said company be able to build a BMS that talks to the vehicle?!) & (B) would any aftermarket company even try, given manufacturers will surely go out of their way to prevent this (we've already seen OTA disabling of features on EVs & I don't have to cite all the right to repair fighting that's ongoing…).
Is this a good thing? Absolutely not.
Is it how it should be? Also no.
But a lot of us (present party included) enable this when we want nice new things.
Until that changes, we're not getting cheaper battery packs for a legacy vehicle.
> I hate the lack of an online parts catalog where I can purchase OEM parts. This is a big issue for me. I have enough experience to do anything on ICE car myself, engine rebuild included.
It seems you're not aware that not only the parts catalog is available online for basically everyone [1] but also their repair guides / service manuals [2]?
None cost anything to access, [2] is a free subscription and only costs something if you need their software ("Toolbox") which you can book for a certain time.
I am well aware of the parts catalog. I was specific about being able to see pricing.
For me this smells like a dark pattern. Tesla gets you in the car at a reasonable price point but why can't they show part prices online? Or even better sell them online? They are a tech company.
Right now, I can tell you the cost of a part for literally any main stream car with just a simple search. I can tell if the parts in stock or if they are out of stock how quickly I can expect to get them.
Why can't tesla do this, if legacy automakers have been doing this for years?
I don't actually mind the center screen on mine - it is actually fine and there is no 'wheel overlaps gauge cluster' issue. I also like the 'air directly hits my face though the wheel factor' That said, I'm weirder than most about airflow.
The auto wipers suck, there is no dance around it.
My issue is that the silly choices seem to be rapidly worsening.
My 2018 model 3 has fantastic parking sensors. The new cars without them will conveniently tell you to stop when the wall is currently sitting on the hood of the car after you hit it. It is a dumb choice that doesn't work.
No turn stalk is just why most drivers don't use signals anymore...which sucks.
No drive stalk means confusion about drive direction and if the throttle is armed. I ALREADY have this issue in my model 3, it is incredibly easy to end up going the wrong directly rapidly. The lack of creep means that a model 3 in autohold is easy to confuse for a car in park. They really need to make the P icon bigger.
No online catalog sucks, though I think with volume, that will happen via a third party. A big issue is the fact they they did agile changes to cars in a single model year so it is hard to know which part you need in some cases.
Battery - eh. For a comparable ICE vehicle - my old Volvo XC40 - A motor replacement is not massively far off from a battery, easily close to $10K.
I hope that solid state batteries make huge jumps.
My tesla was $30/mo more to insure than the XC40 - that is material. I do save more than $30/mo on gas though, but the Xc40 was a 25mpg premium gas car so that is exceptional.
I’ve test driven most of the competition. They are all much more expensive for a subpar product from what I’ve seen.
IMO the plugin hyrbid market is a much more natural transition and some of those vehicles are becoming very good. The Chrysler Pacifica plug-in minivan is excellent for the price and the BMW X5 plugins are by far the best luxury plugin SUVs that I’ve seen.
You can get good deals on used Pacifica plugins too. Typically in the $20k range.
But we still need a good EV option that is close to $20k brand new.
That made Ioniq dead in the water for us. Not to mention lack of good life changing features we rely on in our Teslas.
If you only drive local, ever, then the Ioniq could work… but why would you get one?
And now that the Model Y price has dropped so much, you should be comparing the features of the no-haggle straight priced Model Y to the features and charger network of the dealer-marked-up Ioniq, not comparing to the Model 3.
Barely used Taycan… lol I wonder why they gave it up? Could it be the poor efficiency? Or that a Model S Plaid is quicker and costs less? Or again the charger network has a small existential issue.
Depending where you are in the country, this can be a feature.
Where I live (Oregon), Tesla only bothered to build chargers in the big population centers, while other companies have built CCS chargers all over the place.
If you pick a random geographical location in Oregon it's more likely to be closest to a CCS charger than a Tesla charger.
Tesla wins in other counts like "number of charging stalls" because they built 20 at a time, but you can't road trip to a lot of eastern Oregon with one.
It can, but out of the seven different Tesla owners I know, zero own a CCS charger adapter.
What I've observed is that Tesla owners (this includes my own parents) are so convinced that NACS is superior to CCS (which, to be fair, it has a lot of advantages) that they don't want to use CCS. They'll put down CCS any chance they get, and there's this weird sense of "purity" that they maintain by not using an adapter. Also the adapter costs extra money.
I'm sure that not all Tesla owners are like this, but many of them are, especially people who have owned Teslas for longer.
I don't own a CCS adapter yet, although I'm in the market for one. Not because I need it, but because it's nice to have even more options. I did drive through Eastern (edit: Central and Eastern would be more accurate) Oregon twice a couple years on the way to Idaho and back, and superchargers worked fine, but it's always nice to get more granular coverage.
Personally that notion of purity seems alien to me. I also have a CHAdeMO adapter and have needed it once (edit: nope, a few times, just remembered charging at the Nez Perce Casino in Idaho), but it is nice to have the option.
Probably mostly a 'dont need to'. CCS is annoying- you need the apps and/or to swipe a card, there is no integration in the GPS, etc.
The Supercharger is like EZpass for charging - you just plug it in -they bill you later.
Totally agree that for some reason, the most common thread among CCS charging companies is their inability to make it easy to use their chargers. I have a lot of complaints about Tesla, but the charging experience they've developed is not one of them.
Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that once NACS becomes the standard, all the current CCS companies will simply port their terrible user experience over to NACS rather than having the current experience be standard.
> BMW X5 plugins are by far the best luxury plugin SUVs that I’ve seen
I'm curious if you shopped the PHEV Cayenne to compare? I'm very likely to buy one this month (used) and the few that I've test-driven have seemed pretty great, coming from a 235K miles 2005 CR-V. :)
> nobody makes an EV minivan even though it should be a no-brainer.
VW makes them, they just won't bring them to the US. They have officially announced they are coming in June, but time will tell. I'm going to look close when it comes - it could save me a lot of $$$ most months (the pacifica hybrid as much lower range on battery and so wouldn't save nearly as much)
They dropped the range. Apparently the rules for what qualifies for some rebate changed and so they put in less batteries while also meeting whatever law that was. If you only want the hybrid for rebates then who cares, but if you are looking at them for practical reasons that isn't useful.
The best feature? The only thing you lose is the ability to fold down the middle seat, but you can still remove it if you need to haul something large. We had one for 3 years and needed to take the seats out 3/4 different times.
It's really the defining feature of the Chrysler vans compared to the others, the ability to go from "all seats in van" to "flat empty van" without removing the seats is quite a nice convenience.
And I don't know if you can even get the hybrid in the 8 seat setup, and it's more than $10k more than a somewhat similar Kia.
If access to the supercharger network is the only factor for you, then it may be good choice. When quality or safety are also factors, then the choice is not obvious. How much will Tesla charge you for repairs over the lifetime of the vehicle. How bigger is the chance that you kill or injure your family due to quality issues.
Please have a look at the Reuters Investigation below for context.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-mu...
Many cars can use the Tesla network now, and you are probably biased to your geographical area. In Stockholm (Sweden) for example the Tesla chargers are located far away from the city center, while there are many third party chargers available anywhere.
Seriously. Just give me a NORMAL car with a modern electric drivetrain and I’ll be happy. I have my 4Runner for longer trips and “electric grid down because Texas is a 3rd world island in a 1st world country” situations.
These electric cars are going for full gimmickry and just look like a giant long term ownership nightmare. Built to be disposable status symbols for your average American trying to appear wealthier than they are instead of practical vehicles for the mass market.
If you can get a very base model Nissan Leaf, they're pretty basic. Bonus points if it's a bit older. Ours is extremely old fashioned, and except for the sound when driving is basically indistinguishable from a mid-2010s Honda Fit.
My 2012 Leaf is amazing. It has sadly lost a lot of battery capacity, and I think there is something funny going on with the brakes, but it is still a great car. Just can't go very far anymore. But I only drive it around my small town anyway, so it doesn't need to go very far.
One minor comment, but if the electric grid is down, then it's likely you won't be able to pump gas either. At least, most gas stations have not planned to be functional without electricity.
Yeah. But I can still fill an ICE car manually with a can or hand pump.
Also hurricane evacuation with mass electric adoption is going to be an interesting situation to observe. It may be better than with an ICE. We’ll see.
> And do you keep spare gas in cans ready, before the outage?
A lot of folks keep a 5 gallon for their lawn mower… although gas powered mowers are going the way of the dinosaur too
But yes, I tend to keep 2-4 5 gallon containers of 4 stroke gas. I’m almost certainly an outlier, but in more rural areas where you have to be self sufficient it’s not rare.
Heck, a lot of pickup trucks have diesel tanks with 12v pumps built into the bed.
But then you also have to meter the gas to know how much to pay. Most gas stations have no plan for a power outage, and little incentive to plan for such a situation.
I believe you but this never made sense to me. A random internet search shows that there are on the order of 100k gas stations in the USA. It seems like FEMA could come up with on the order of $20M to buy generators for all of them and make them come up with a plan to operate without electric power.
Although maybe it costs more than I think? This "industry lobbyist"[1] claims $40k PER PUMP which seems much more expensive than the ~$2000/station I was estimating.
However they do not require generators on site, and only require companies with a 10 or more stations in a county to have generators available, but then only within 24 hours.
This is more regulation than I had expected!
There was great article on HN years ago about a Canadian (New Brunswick, maybe?) gas station run by a former software engineer, and how he had planned for an outage by getting a generator for his station. But when the power outage happened, he was too far away to get back to his station, and couldn't find a place to fill up to get back. Wish I could find it again...
Both my wife and I charge at home. We're probably spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-80 or so a month in charging versus the $200 or so we'd spend on gas (Texas has relatively cheap electricity rates, but our gas is also fairly cheap)
I'd rather just see the kwh usage. Rates vary wildly in the US, even within the same state. Some states with average prices have utilities with cheap power.
And others with overall low rates have dumb utilities that charge high rates if you use more than 1000kwh, which most EV owners certainly do.
Yes rates vary, the point is to have ballpark figures to compare against the cost of gasoline. Without that the conversation is not particularly useful.
If we know the kwh, we can extrapolate both that and situation specific numbers. Average $/kwh in the US is ~$.15.
This is just like a gas car, where the conversation would start with mpg, not "What's your gas cost per month before and after getting gas car?" It is precisely because of the variation in both gas price and usage that it is important to start from consumption per mile and not a total price.
Asking a random person for their kwh usage is not realistic. Dollars per month change (where they haven't changed driving drastically) is more practical.
But you aren't asking random people. You are asking EV owners on Hacker News.
In general, EV owners are pretty savvy. More than most actually know what they pay per kwh and have a pretty good idea of their consumption. The biggest common mistake that I see is net vs gross.
It's tough to isolate because we've been charging for a while. Rates where I am are currently $0.12 / KWh. Last time I did the math they were closer to $0.08 / KWh.
I've got a Tesla Model 3. My wife had a Pacifica Plugin Hybrid. Any given point of the day, one of them is probably plugged in if we're at home.
It took 2-3 hours to recharge the Pacifica for it's 35 mile range. Full recharge on the Tesla is about 5 hours if it's totally drained but the Tesla has much better battery management so you typically set the maximum charge to 80% of the battery for daily driving. Typically, I'll plug the Tesla in when it's still got 50-60% of the battery left.
Looking at a graph of the usage at my house from the utility company is pretty hilly and coincides with weather. Goes up a lot during the hotter months as my AC kicks on. I don't notice anything significant from it though.
I'm also enrolled in a bill normalization program with my utility company where they give me the same bill every month throughout the year so that we don't get surprise spikes as the weather changes.
If you were spending $500/month on gas at typical prices that's anywhere from 125 to 170 gallons, if you're only getting 20mpg that's close to 3,000 miles a month, maybe 35,000 miles a year. That's a lot of driving compared to the average person.
Even assuming $6/gal and just 20mpg, it's still about 83 miles/day(for 20 work/commuting days a month) or 55 miles/day (with 30 commuting days a month). Assuming a generous 60mph as the avg speed for the commute, that's about 1day/month sitting in a car. More likely avg speed of 30mph and that's 2days a month in the car.
That is excessive driving for an average person/commute. I presume op was likely exaggerating to make a point.
Anyway, for any EV owners, a more likely scenario is a person spending about $100-$150 for fuel per month. Doesn't buying a brand new $50000 EV's as opposed to a $30000 IC car (potentially used), and the insurance/registration costs offset the gains made by fuel savings?
> Anyway, for any EV owners, a more likely scenario is a person spending about $100-$150 for fuel per month. Doesn't buying a brand new $50000 EV's as opposed to a $30000 IC car (potentially used), and the insurance/registration costs offset the gains made by fuel savings?
Yes, given current prices, even with a $7.5k subsidy
> potentially used
If you open the door to ~$10k used Japanese compacts with a good 100k+miles left, it's not even remotely close.
EVs are still a rich person thing for now, which may be the primary reason?
Serms like you get it. I wish that Aptera was building at scale and also had a more normal looking alternative model for non-geeks.
But in general, new cars are for well above median income people and used EVs have a cost time bomb attached to them in the form of a battery replacement.
This does indeed sound extreme. Even when my wife was commuting 120miles a day, we never spent that much in gas (2012 Honda CR-V). This was from 2018-2022, so lots of variability in prices.
I suppose with a truck or large SUV, it's possible to spend that much, or a commute that is hundreds of miles. Ah, one more scenario, if you have a luxury car and fill it up with premium fuel, that can raise the price substantially.
I checked gas prices in Germany, which I'm fairly sure are higher than in the US, around €1.8 per liter. That makes it about 270l of gasoline.
With the average fuel efficiency in Europe, I'd say the average car here uses about 8-9l in a mixed driving regime (town/city + highway). So that would mean about 3000-3300km per month, 36000-40000km per year.
That's a TON of driving :-O
Edit I:
Though I imagine in the US we're a lot more likely for the fuel efficiency to be closer to 15l/100km (F150 or something), so those distance numbers go down by 60% or so :-)
Edit II:
Oh, I forgot the cost of gas in the US, so nevermind. Gasoline is about 60% cheaper in the US so at the end of the day... the distance numbers do end up closer to 3000km per month.
I kind of agree actually on your cost points. It’s still a luxury purchase. I am a bit more conservative of a saver but feel priced out and sadly went ICE.
If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.
If you don’t qualify barely, a brand new ICE vehicle is going to last years and be cheaper. Is it really worth it to push budget?
If you way don’t qualify, definitely buying an EV. Also congrats on your income.
> If you qualify for the EV tax credit, I would argue the car is too expensive for your budget.
The AGI limit for a couple is $300K. I'm pretty anti-new car as a financial move, but even I have to admit that a couple pulling down $250K-$300K/yr is probably going to be able to fade buying a new car if they want.
Agree but everything is obviously relative to people’s situation and no perfect rule.
Location, state property taxes, share the car or not, do they already have loan on another new car, new home owners or not, current net worth, age/retirement goal, kids, kids in daycare, etc…
$300k AGI can get eaten ridiculously quick. Hence why I think an EV is too expensive for most.
Any new car is too expensive for most, so in that limited sense I agree with you.
The EV credit serves to make an EV competitive on a TCO basis, so if you can afford any new car, you can probably equally well afford an EV with the credit.
> Hybrid technology has generally meant comparatively higher sticker prices, though fuel savings can defray costs over time. Today’s average hybrid costs about $1,700 more, but the Ford Maverick pickup and Lexus NX SUV hybrids actually have lower sticker prices than gas-only versions. The new Lexus RX Hybrid costs the same as a comparably equipped non-hybrid.
> In 2015 CR calculated that most hybrids took eight years to pay for themselves through fuel savings, with some, including the 2015 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid and Lexus RX450h, taking more than a decade. Today, improved technology and higher gas prices mean the average payback is four years with gas at $3.35 a gallon and 12,000 miles driven a year. At $3 a gallon, the payback period increases to five years. The more miles driven, the quicker the payback.
> You may also save money on repairs and maintenance. Case in point: The Prius is often in the top spot in our reliability surveys. A hybrid’s regenerative brakes create less wear and tear, so braking components can last longer, too. It’s true that replacing a hybrid battery can be a big expense, costing on average around $7,400, according to RepairPal, but our surveys show such replacements are rare. “Hybrid technology has been very reliable in our studies,” Fisher says.
$1,700 more doesn't seem like that much, and 12,000 miles per year is not a high bar to clear.
And poorly designed. My Chevy Volt is Is a minimum of what a plug-in hybrid should be. I get 45 to 60 miles on a charge (winter-summer), and about 80% of the time, it covers a hundred percent of my driving.
I think that size the batteries for plug-in hybrid depends on your usual driving patterns. Daily driving, the 50 mile range I have now is great. About twice a week I need more like 100 mile range and 2-3 times a month, we take longer weekend trips around New England.
The hybrid version of a rav 4 is ~ 3k more than the base rav 4, and is also functionally at a higher trim level.
Like, sure, if you can't afford the $3k, get the base I guess, but they're not a great deal more expensive, and demand is sort of cratering now that gas is cheap and the 'green halo' effect has moved strictly into the ev realm.
Interestingly it's the same way with the honda civic and insight. Yeah, the insight ~ 3k more but it also comes with more features that many folks are going to opt for anyway.
Finally, to be honest, economically, it never makes sense to buy a new car. Ever. If we really were concerned about value we'd look at prices for a beater prius vs a beater civic. The differential is there, but not that much. As much hay is made about battery degregation, prius batteries have held up surprisingly well. If you were looking for a cheap commuter I'd highly recommend it.
Unfortunately they're hard to find in stock and without a mark up. There's probably some 2+ hours away from here, but I wish there was at least one nearby to test drive first before committing to a 4+ hour drive...
With thousands fewer parts, cheaper fuel, and the time savings of not having to go to a gas station, EVs have a lot of things working in their favor to make them cheaper to operate.
I purchased my corrolla off the lot in 2004 and _chose_ to go with manual everything for because it's cheaper and more reliable.
here we are 20 years on and that car is rock solid reliable with 168k miles and regular maintenance. I'm hoping to get another 20 years out of it.
When I decided I needed a minivan I went out and bought a 2007 Honda Odyssey, put a few thousand dollars into it and it runs like a champ (has just under 190k miles on it). But the Odyssey has an ongoing problem I'm trying to figure out and rectify ... the power sliding doors. I'd honestly rather just open them manually.
People love their convenience, but you know these vehicles with all their fancy whizbang features are going to be a maintenance burden during their lifetime.
100%. My S.O. wants my next car to be an electric, but I'm hesitant because my current car (an 05 Civic LX) has been running non-stop like a champ since the day I started driving it 17 years ago. I've been going to the same mechanic in all that time, and repair costs have always been low thanks in part to the OEM market, but also to the self-repairability of older Hondas. I dread the day I have to get a new car only to find out I can't self-repair the car as much as I do now.
Their most expensive electricity scenario is 20c/kWh. Maybe that was realistic when the article was written 5 years ago, but electricity is definitely more expensive than that in California now, even with a special EV rate plan.
Yep, make sure to install a $50k solar system in your 3 million dollar SFH, then they’re super cost effective, and for everyone!!
I’d say my used 2016 X with free supercharging was a good deal but in the year I’ve owned it I spent $2k on repairs for things like the drivers window falling down and the f**ing wing door failing to register as locked and beeping incessantly while driving.
That’s not to mention the horrible ride quality, 10k depreciation and the $3k aftermarket fix for halfshaft and tire wear problems.
Truthfully, if electricity is getting that expensive in your area, your very first move should be to put some solar panels on your roof not buying a new car.
Not always an option for all people but that's what I'd be doing in that situation.
EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars. People who rely on street parking and apartment dwellers would likely find EV’s more inconvenient than a gas car.
We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Another factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
I'm in that first group and I don't see how it makes the most sense. They are not more convenient. I can "charge" my gas car in 2 minutes basically anywhere in the country.
I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
And they're all much more expensive than a nice 5 year old gas car.
My wife and I own a single family home, a gas-powered car (Toyota Rav4), and an electric car (a standard range Tesla model 3). The electric car is much more convenient for us for city driving and the gas-powered car is much more convenient for road trips.
Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy. For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently.
Refuelling the Tesla is automatic and effortless. After you park at home, if the charge is <40% then plug it in. The next time you need to drive somewhere it will be full. It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.
Road trips with the Tesla, however, are currently impractical: we end up adding another ~30% to the drive time. With only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal. Range anxiety also becomes a much bigger factor driving through more rural areas and your route choices weigh supercharger locations above everything else.
We've got used to the self driving convenience of the Tesla but the Comma[1] on our Rav4 is just about as good for highway driving.
This is the text version of those old infomercials where someone tries to open a jar of pickles and flubs it so badly they end up killing their small dog and going to the hospital with injuries. But for 3 easy payments of $19.99, here's a device that will save your dog and your time!
you're free to describe gassing up as this arduous event that takes all this time, planning, and mental energy, but that doesn't make it true, and while your wife may have anxiety around gas stations, most women don't unless they're gassing up in a strange place late at night. It's generally a non-issue.
You can be pro-EV without trying so hard to vilify gas.
I don't know, I really hate gas station trips. It's not, like, a dealbreaker, but if I had a car that I could just plug in in the garage, it would be a fairly sizable improvement. Plus it's expensive as hell, 10 EUR per 100km.
But plugging into a garage outlet isnt available to everyone. Take that garage outlet away and require yourself to go to a location and sit for an hour to charge. Is it still better?
That's a bit of a fallacy, because "a location" will probably be "the place where I parked my car", given how easy it is to transport electricity and how profitable it is to install a cheap charger on the sidewalk. I'd very much rather go to "a location" of "where I happened to park" than a dedicated gas station (which isn't very far, but isn't right where my car is).
> That's a bit of a fallacy, because "a location" will probably be "the place where I parked my car"
Maybe. The closest public charging station to our house is in the parking lot of a semi-abandoned office complex a mile away. It has the best rate but my partner refuses to use it, both for the boredom factor and the isolated location factor.
The second closest is 5 miles away at a Whole Food which yes, the car would be parked there sometimes anyway. But having to spend an extra hour sipping coffee at WF waiting for the car gets old pretty fast.
Sure, that's now (the closest EV charging spot is pretty far away for me too). The convenience factor for "when everyone has EVs" is much larger than the one for "when everyone has gas cars", as in the former, the refuelling station is going to be much closer, on average, than in the latter.
This is the reality for me now. I have a charging station about a mile away, and another a couple miles away. But I’m still supposed to find an additional 1-2 hours per week to charge my vehicle?
Yes, I can see that becoming the case at some point. For the past decade (the time we've had EVs) and even today, it's not though (at least around here). So EV ownership is still a daily logistical exercise.
True, if you don't have a garage or other way to charge when parked, it's an issue. Over here we have chargers in many super market/mall parking lots, so you can charge while shopping for groceries, which is very convenient.
If you can’t charge at home it’s an issue. Charging while running errands again will not work (what if you do almost everything online? amazon fresh, etc)
The only way this works is reducing 0-100 charge time to 5 mins.
Indeed. All I need to know about gas is that I paid $50 this morning for ~450km of range. While my EV would take multiple charges to get that range, the total cost would be only a few dollars.
On a purely fuel cost/KM basis, but you don’t save money on the long term with an EV. You have to do a LOT of driving to make up the difference between the vehicle costs and infrastructure costs.
I haven’t had to ‘go get gas’ for 4 years. People probably argued “getting water from the well isn’t that hard compared to maintaining all this infrastructure”… but none of us want to go back to that. Completely losing a class of chore is freeing, even if it wasn’t that horrible anyway.
For long distance trips, I mostly agree with you. My habit was always to stop every hour to get a drink and stretch legs so it doesn’t bother me as much. For your 11 hr trip, it would probably add 2 hours.
I'd assume that the parent post compared walking outside your door to a well in your own yard, as used to be the common practice in the countryside, which indeed takes much less time than gassing up a vehicle but obviously not something you'd want to do if you can have indoor plumbing instead.
> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy.
I have never seen anyone say fueling a gas car needs planning and mental energy. Unless the first car you ever drove was an EV, it is hard to believe that it NOT almost a second nature to drive to a nearest gas station as soon as your car beeps about remaining mile range. This is greenwashing at its finest.
Smaller battery EV means slower to charge (until battery tech evolved well). There should be a market for smaller battery EVs for who rarely drive long, so please don't say that every EVs should have big batteries and overkill cooling system.
But it does. Some of us have gotten burned by putting poor-quality gas in our cars. Now I have to make sure I find a "good" gas station. Guess what? Those aren't as plentiful. Usually I have to go out of my way to get to one. That's in the middle of running errands when I have other things to do and don't necessarily have the time to go out of my way to go to a gas station.
I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler. So cars end up queuing up from two different directions for the pump - and I've seen fights break out over people believing other drivers had cut in front of them at the pump.
Let's not even talk about trying to get gas during rush hour when getting in and out of the station may be problematic and exacerbates all the other problems noted above. So you go home to wait out the traffic but you still have to go back out on a separate trip just to get gas.
So yeah, that requires planning and mental energy. I'd love to get an EV and just come home and plug it in and not worry about it.
For the 2-3 long trips I take per year, I rent a car anyway. That way I upgrade to a nicer, bigger car than I drive on a day-to-day basis, I don't have to worry about breaking down on the trip, and if I do end up buying an EV, I don't have to worry about charging on a trip. It's the way to go.
> I also live in an urban area that seems to have fewer pumps per capita than other urban areas I've visited. This results in lines at the pump, which are exacerbated by automakers not standardizing on which side of the car to place the fuel filler.
EVs have also not standardized the location of the charging port, and it takes substantially longer to charge an EV vs fuel a gas car, so doesn’t an EV exacerbate your issues here if you don’t have home charging?
Everybody seems to like home charging, which makes sense, but it’s not available to everybody. So what are these people to do? Spend an extra 1-2 hours a week at a charging bay? That’s a hard sell, spending an hour or more per week doing something that used to take 5 mins.
If you don't have home charging then you're probably not driving an EV right now. You're waiting for new battery tech to provide for faster charging. Meanwhile, there's only been about 6% penetration of EV's into the homeowner market so it's not like there isn't growth for years to come just in that market alone.
Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact.
It turns out, even 10-30 seconds during a commute matters to people. I've personally met people who don't like using a particular station that is basically within a subdivision. Why? Because like most drivers, they fuel up more often on the commute home than out, and this station requires turning left onto a residential street.
It is a small annoyance, but it really is nice not having an annoyance. :)
> Yeah, people will say none of this matters, but talk to people in the gas station biz and you find out differently. Which side of the street or traffic circle the station on has a huge impact.
It certainly doesn’t bother me, but given there are people who will drive 100 MPH to save 3 mins on a commute, I can see how some would be impatient and act this way.
Um, don't fill up at Brand X on the road? My millennial personal trainer said her dating prospects couldn't even change a tire let alone do an oil change, now I understand just how bad the situation was for her until she married a rocket engineer.
I'm not anti-EV (we're on our third one, over 10 years!) but I'm not a fanboy either, I try to be very objective on them. There's good and there's bad. The expenses are higher than some will want you to believe, but there's benefits.
If you want to promote EVs it's good to be objective. Claiming that filling up a gas car is a major hassle doesn't pass the smell test. Gas stations are everywhere so you never need to plan for it or go out of your way or wait more than 5 minutes.
Doesn't pass the smell test? I commented on the real issues I have and yet you're here saying it doesn't pass the smell test? Who are you to tell me I'm not experiencing the problems I experience?
I can't presume to speak for you, so I assume you are experiencing those things as problems.
However, your experience is so far out of the norm that it does not translate to convincing people to buy an EV. For just about everyone who drives, finding a gas stations and filling up is not something that requires planning or mental energy. It's so easy that it's lost in the noise of daily tasks.
I have a SR+ and have done about a dozen trips from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and back about 10 hours in a ICE car and 11.25 in my SR+
You really should never be charging past 70% (the exception being before climbing in sub freezing temps in the sierras) on road trips and instead plan to make much shorter charging stops more often. I’m normally out of a supercharger in 15-20 min if I precondition the battery before charging and it’s about the time my wife needs to stop for a pee break anyways so it’s kinda great to stop. Use the restroom and be ready to go again. If you are charging 45 min you are doing it so wrong.
Great, now I need to stop even more often...where do I sign up? If your wife has to pee for 15-20 minutes, that often, she should probably see a doctor. Last week I drove my V8 F-150 from Raleigh to near Baltimore Maryland (~310 miles) with 4 adults and a child, a bed full of suitcases and hockey equipment (for a tournament) and we stopped exactly once for coffee. I filled the gas tank in Raleigh, and didn't fill it again until we were almost halfway back to Raleigh on the way home.
Give me 500 miles of realistic range and a 10 minute full-tank "fill-up" in an EV and I'll consider it. Until then, it's simply not going to happen for me.
Yeah that drive already sucks, stopping more than necessary would make it worse. We drive from Raleigh to around State College a few times a year and usually make one stop to eat and stretch our legs. A four year old and a dog sitting around waiting for a charge would add on to that stress.
But this is what makes it so painful. You need to map out available working charging station at short intervals which adds a lot of extra driving and stopping.
On a road trip I drive the full range of the gas tank (~450 miles) nonstop and then stop for 5 minutes at the next exit which invariably has a working gas station.
The Supercharger network is cool. But I can go 300ish miles in my class B RV before refueling as opposed to 120ish miles in my Mach E. It's 10 minutes to refuel my RV vs 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on the state of the charger (ElectrifyAmerica) or how long I have to wait. That was how I made the decision to wait for 400 mile range (likely a Silverado F-150 EV and yes I haul stuff, I build things, and my RV makes for a crap pickup truck but I get by) before returning to long range travel with an EV.
A friend circumnavigated the United States in a 300 mile Range Tesla so I don't doubt what's possible here.
> It took me an afternoon hanging out with my electrician cousin and about $400 in parts from Amazon to build our own at-home electric refuelling station.
This is a big reason I haven't even considered an EV. How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.
My vehicles are first and foremost utilitarian; I use them to get from A to B. EVs make that simple equation "complicated", and I have other issues maintaining a household that demand my attention.
it depends on how much charging you want. all EV's can charge off of a slower 115vac 15amp circuit. At my last place I had a dedicated 40amp 230vac socket much like you'd have installed for a big electric heater in a garage or a pool heater or a dryer. Good recharge times which I actually have only needed once in my life.
At my current place I'm just using an extension cord to my outdoor outlet and I give it the 1500 watt option. You can even cut that in half if you don't want the "my this cord is warm.." effect.
In the end, the slower charge is the better charge, so my laziness has been winning. I don't see installing a 230vac socket any time soon given how well it's been working.
I've got an older phev that originally only got 14 miles of pure electric @ up to 79 mph, it's battery is down to about 9 miles expected. And that isn't a lot, but it is enough for 90% of my trips around town. Where you REALLY see this working well is if you have to go out every day to pick something or someone up locally. The amount of fuel burned on warmup cycles and local trips is not insubstantial.
The gas tank needle just LOVES to move with every small trip otherwise.
I sometimes go months without buying gas using that tiny miniscule range.
the question I can never find anyone answering is pretty straightforward.
is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging? I can't imagine it is, but while everyone talks about things like only having to gas up once every 4 months now, it's not as if the electricity comes for free.
> is it cheaper paying the electricity for charging?
EV promoters will say it is always cheaper but you need to do the math. Depends on your fuel cost vs. electricity costs vs. your gas car mileage.
For example my first EV (Fiat 500) was more expensive to run than my gas car that got over 40MPG. This is in CA with extremely high PG&E electricity rates (but also high fuel costs).
So, it depends.
Also if you use public chraging stations they usually charge a premium for profit. You can see your local charging station rates on e.g. chargepoint website. Use the actual numbers and do the math to be sure.
There are several people in this thread explaining it is about 10x cheaper.
A base Tesla 3 is 70kWh * 5¢/kWh (my Toronto overnight rate) is ~$3.50 CAD for ~400km range. Gas in my Volvo C30 would be 400km * 8l/100km * $1/l = $32 CAD.
If you drive every day, a plugin-electric can save you a LOT of money. And that's before the savings in oil, brakes, and other maintenance.
I'm stuck with street parking, so it is much less appealing to me.
Ouch. I forget how mad California is. No wonder rooftop solar is so attractive.
Peak rates are ~20¢/kWh here, but there is a largish fixed per-customer monthly hit for various debts and obligations. And people regularly complain we're the highest cost province in Canada. 70¢/kWh (in BIG dollars!!!) is just insane.
Average US price for electricity is ~$.15/kwh. A Model 3 will use ~330 wh/mile at highway speeds, and if you charged _very_ inefficiently (level 1), you'd see gross of around 360 wh/mile.
Compared to a gas car that can get 40 mpg on the highway this works out to:
40 mpg == 1 gallon == ~$2.85 (current price here) == 0.07125/mile
EV == .360 * .15 == .054/mile
Of course, if you have time of use rates, you might pay half that for the EV. If you drive in town, your efficiency might be more like 270wh/mile too.
Similarly, that MPG is... very arbitrary. But the bottom line is that most people are getting a significantly lower $/mile purely on energy usage.
Gasoline is very expensive. If it wasn't so expensive, we'd burn it to make electricity.
It’s not free, you have to include the price of the solar panels you bought excess of in the cost because you can just remove those and sell them if they’re not needed. You essentially installed greater solar capacity to fuel an EV, so not free!
Selling solar panels is going to recover very little of the cost. Most of the cost is the labor and permitting. A lot of the rest is the wiring and inverters. Might as well use the excess power you generate to run a space heater/crypto miner, or net-meter it to the grid.
Charging at home is difficult compared to driving to a gas station?
This is all moot. Sodium ion and lfp and newer battery techs will increase range and drop the initial purchase price of EVs under what an ICE can compete with
Some snap in time clickbait article won't change the technological tsunami. Even if the US drags it's feet, the rest of the world will eagerly adopt them. EVs promise energy independent and cheap transport combined with wind / solar.
Every automaker knows this to differing levels of organizational denial, but they all feel it coming.
You realize this isn’t the first EV hype cycle yes? They’ve been tried before and as the article states the early adopter market is saturated worldwide.
There are some very real problems that can’t be solved by battery tech, and only by removing the battery and switching to an alternative fuel source.
The only reason EVs are succeeding now given all their shortcomings is because we’re being forced into them. Remove that force and I don’t see EVs seeing mass adoption.
Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?
Look Tesla can already build EVs at price parity with ices, they are currently sitting here n their profit margin. This isn't a hype cycle, Chinese EV makers and battery suppliers have 200+ wh/kg lfp and 150 wh/kg sodium ion in mass production scaling.
This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.
Yes it won't be over night, but if you are doing production planning, financing, stock prediction and other 5-10 year planning, the writing now on the wall.
This is without solid state and sulfur techs. Im only talking about the CATL LFP and sodium ion techs. Those alone will beat ices on cost at initial purchase, to say nothing of cheaper permile "fuel" and maintenance costs.
And keep me n me and wind / solar is STILL dropping in cost, under what any old school power generation method has been. EV costs will only drop.
> Oh there were 400 mile cars cheaper than ice cars before?
Neither gas nor electric cars got that kind of range when they first launched in the early 1900s. But as is true today, gasoline engines got about 20% more range than the electric and were easy to fill.
> This isn't a hype cycle, there are entire car companies in mass production with equal to ice costs now, and the cheaper than ice can ever be is in production scaling.
As there was before. Entire car companies went out of business because they chose to make electric cars instead of gas.
> Very real problems
I’ll name a few:
Battery decreases range with ambient temperature changes
Cannot refuel outside of a charging station
Battery degrades with every charge
Fire hazard having that much energy in a battery that it’s not an if it will fail but a when
I suppose it depends on the length of your commute and what vehicle, but I’ve found that a standard Level 1 charger plugged into a regular outlet, if plugged in all of the time, was more than enough for daily EV commuting. Slow charging is also better for the battery. A lot of people likely don’t need a high powered charger install.
My understanding is that this is largely a myth, at least with modern BEVs with intercooled battery packs. My understanding is that modern battery packs can Level 2 charge with no additional degradation, because they don't get any hotter than during a Level 1 charge.
Level 3 charging is different, but even then, the degradation in battery life isn't as much as you think -- I've heard numbers as low as just 3% faster degradation.
That makes sense, my experience is with a first gen VW e-golf which just has plain batteries- no cooling.
I actually do that with my phone- I use a fast charger with a peltier cooler, that can rapidly charge the phone while keeping it cold. Family/friends think I'm crazy for caring about it, lol
> How I'd find someone to do this work on my garage, and how much it would cost is a huge unknown, and that's just enough friction to simply not consider getting an EV.
Car dealerships will sell the hookups and have connections with local companies who will install for you. No effort required on your part .
If you own a home, you should learn how to locate local trade workers you can trust. You're going to need an electrician eventually, might as well find one before an emergency.
> Refuelling the Rav4 is an errand that takes time, planning, and mental energy
Is there something about that RAv4 vehicle that makes fueling difficult? I have a Lexus, generally it tells me “hey! I’m low on fuel” so I stop at the next convenient gas station I see, fill it with gas in about 5 mins, and I am back on my way to wherever. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly rebellious, I happen to be driving by a gas station even before the car is low on fuel, and I stop and top it off in a few minutes and then am on my way to wherever.
Also, sometimes I’m driving and want a cup of coffee and stop at a coffee shop too…
> For my wife it's also a low-level danger: women find gas stations spooky, apparently
Parking lots are dangerous for women, yes. Purse-snatchers and carjackers exist. They all insist on carrying expensive iPhones that can be fenced, so there goes calling for help. Vehicles themselves are mobile rape cabins (ask Uber) and corpse storage lockers. It's a very vulnerable position for women.
But if your wife thinks a 2-minute refuel at a gas station is bad, wait'll she has to recharge the EV while out and about and can't make it to Walmart.
Some of those recharging lots make illicit gay cruising spots feel like Disney World-- we're talking an empty parking lot in a wooded area behind an office building after-hours, with nobody around to hear you scream.
I agree: if you a part of a two-parent household, who lives in a home with off-street parking where you can add a charger, the best of both worlds is one EV (Tesla) and one plug-in hybrid (e.g. Prius Prime or Rav 4 Prime). Then you only go to a gas station on longer trips.
What percent of the US population falls into this demographic? And what percent of this demo already has one EV?
If you hate filling up at a gas station and want the convenience of it at home then fill gas cans next time you go and bring them home. You can even keep one in the car for on-the-go refueling, something an EV can’t do.
>ith only a ~220 mile range the Tesla needs to stop about every 150 miles for 40 minutes which is brutal.
If you ask my Eastern Europe wife, that's pretty much the way she needs to road trip lol. I think if we get it to 3hrs / 15 minutes break it would be perfect. 240km/40 minutes is a bit of a reach.
Your doctor will tell you stop more often than that. I haven't been able to find anything official though, but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons.
> but nobody says more than 2 hours between breaks for health reasons
DOT regulations for truck drivers is something like every 8 hours stop for 30 mins. This is the first I’ve heard stop every 2 hours which would drive me nuts if we were road tripping together.
this is how i road trip generally. i almost never drive more than 3 hours without stopping for coffee/lunch/dinner. And if its more than 300 miles 90% of the time i'm going to fly.
Any time i'm road tripping more than 3 hours i'm trying to find some cute little town along the way to stop in at. Usually these cute little towns have chargers.
I feel the same way and after speaking with many EV people i've realised the main benefit is how cheap they are to run. This comes down to the increase in efficiency compared to an ICE - ~80% of the battery energy finds its way to the wheels on EV's, vs ~30% on an ICE. If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)
Depending on your mileage, by saving $3k-$4k a year on gas theres certainly a case to be made for an EV being a more sensible financial decision in the long term especially given government tax incentives
One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.
Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.
Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.
One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's? If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.
EVs are still solidly in the "luxury" category; they're specifically being sold to folks who are not paying attention to the price at the pump in the first place. So I don't understand why "they save you money" is even a selling point at all right now.
Once you see folks replacing their beat-up 1992 Honda Civic with EVs then you'll know that "they save you money" is actually a thing.
A lot of people have weird budgets. So they will think nothing of $1000/month for a car payment, but complain about gas prices that work out to $100/month. They rarely consider that they could get better mileage luxury car for similar monthly payments but using a lot less gas.
Which is to say I do know people who complain about gas prices on their luxury cars.
I have a 2021 Chevy Bolt, it is not a luxury car, it was hella cheap. My sister-in-law drives for Uber/Lyft and bought a Tesla model 3 because the total cost of ownership is lower than any gas car
Not all models. With the tax rebate, a Tesla 3 costs nearly the same as a Camry, so does the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt. If you want a Polestar or Mach-e, sure, then your in BMW/Merc price range.
Pricing from manufacturer websites just now. Base Camry is $26,420, base Model 3 is $38,990(apparently not tax rebate eligible) and the base Model Y is $36,490(after $7500 tax rebate).
Best case comparison there is a $10,070 difference between the Camry and a Tesla.
$10k is a LOT of money to average Americans living paycheck to paycheck. In percentages that's 38% more than the Camry! That's before considering larger loan balances to pay 7% on, since the poor average American won't have that kind of cash. This is almost on par with saying that Whole Foods is the same price as H-E-B or Kroger!
The 3 was eligible for the 7500 tax rebate until a few days ago (Dec 31) so only a few thousand more than the Camry which is easily made up in gas savings (if charging at home) and lower maintenance cost. Over 3 years comes to about the same. However, once you compare feature parity, the 3 was (with rebate) cheaper than the Camry because for the Camry you have to add on option packs to get the same safety features available in the 3 (like blind spot monitoring, backup camera warning, etc.; very important to us), not to mention other features like moonroof etc. You'd have to get the Camry XLE to start matching features (and even that doesn't have the moonroof) and the Hybrid version has a starting MSRP of $32970.
Obviously if your only concern is cost then yes, an ICE is the cheapest option, especially if you get a Corolla or Civic. But if you want more features, EVs are fairly competitive price wise esp once you factor in the gas savings over 3-5 years.
There are also cheaper EV models like the Leaf, Bolt.
This is a pretty weak main benefit as ICE cars are already cheap to run. At 12k miles/year, 30 MPG, and $3.20/gallon you are only talking $1300/year in fuel.
According to AAA, taking fuel, maintenance, repair, and tires into account someone driving 15k miles a year would only save $330. Given the cost premium on an EV over a comparable ICE car, I’m not sure you would ever come out ahead, although the cost gap is admittedly shrinking.
> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10.
I rented a Tesla Model 3 recently. From 40% to 98% cost me $7 CAD and I was able to drive from Vancouver to Tacoma, WA on a single charge and arrived with 20% battery. In the Seattle suburbs it cost a bit more, $13 USD, to go from 20% to 90% due to a supercharger station having issues so demand was higher at the next closest one.
$7 to go 175mi(283km) sold me on an EV as my next car. I never felt like I would be stranded and when the battery is conditioned for fast charging by time you pop in somewhere to use the bathroom and grab a coffee or snacks you're pretty much good to go.
>by time you pop in somewhere to use the bathroom and grab a coffee or snacks you're pretty much good to go.
I really think these comments are just EV driver rationalization. You really spend 30-45 minutes at a rest stop on road trips? When we take road trips we spend almost no time stopped. Even if we're eating, it's in the car. I can't even imagine stopping multiple times for 30-45 minutes to recharge, that is not the same as "going to the bathroom and grabbing a snack". That takes like 5 mins tops, the rest is just wasting time you could be on the road.
45 minutes is only if you are trying to charge over 80% which you don’t actually want to do. Unlike gas tanks that have a consistent fill rate, batteries are like a sponge where near empty the charge/fill rate is much much faster than when it’s nearly full. 20% to 80% is about 10 /15 minutes depending on how new the super charger station is. This gives you about another 3 hours of normal highway driving or so depending on conditions like temperature, 70mph+ and how hilly/windy the drive is. However, if you time the stop around meal times then you can take 45 minutes to charge to fill while you are eating at a restaurant.
Sadly, it is true most non Tesla chargers are terrible and require you make an account/give up personal information first and are not maintained well. Tesla does as well but the stations are maintained and the account signup happens when you buy the car so you just plug it in and charge.
There needs to be a just a pay and fill chargers like gas pumps but that doesn’t fly with todays VC vultures.
Electrify America was built by Volkswagen as punishment for the diesel scandal. They have zero interest in maintaining them.
> 45 minutes is only if you are trying to charge over 80% which you don’t actually want to do. Unlike gas tanks that have a consistent fill rate, batteries are like a sponge where near empty the charge/fill rate is much much faster than when it’s nearly full. 20% to 80% is about 10 /15 minutes depending on how new the super charger station is. This gives you about another 3 hours of normal highway driving or so depending on conditions like temperature, 70mph+ and how hilly/windy the drive is. However, if you time the stop around meal times then you can take 45 minutes to charge to fill while you are eating at a restaurant.
Great so instead of just filling to 100% and using that until it runs out now I have to think and plan the next few hundred miles and charge accordingly.
So you're stopping every 3 hours for 15 minutes? So a 10 hour road trip includes 45 minute waiting for your vehicle to charge? And that assumes the chargers are immediately free. That sounds horrible to me.
I think the point is that one group of people is imagining a change and saying, “That change will be intolerable!” And then another group is actually experiencing the change and saying, “Hey, it’s actually pretty good.” You won’t know how you really feel about it until you try it yourself, and speculating about the second group won’t net you any benefit.
20 minutes every 6 hours is absolutely minimum for me, if not more often. That’s to stretch, relax, walk around. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do that. But this is in Europe where distances are smaller.
The mental gymnastics these people do to make themselves feel good about waiting longer to fuel up their EVs to go shorter distances vs filling up ICEs is impressive.
I'm not ready to drink the Kool-aid. Give me an 800 mile range EV. Then and only then will I not care if it takes an hour to charge to 100% because I'm unlikely to be able to drive farther than that in a day. I've had to drive nearly that distance once and it was miserable and I'll never do it again without breaking it up into overnight stays at a hotel.
Seriously? If I take a shit, it's more than 5 minutes itself. Waiting in line to buy coffee or a donut, let alone eat (I guess if you are in a real hurry eat in your car, but don't you want a break???). Just doing a lap of the parking lot to stretch my legs. Even if that's just 25 minutes, that's still quite a bit of charge. That said I'll still choose a bus or train over a car trip any day I can, but yeah..
I also usually rent a car for the same trip, but am quite happy to continue renting every single time. $150 for the couple of days I usually leave for, maybe at most 3 times a year, and maybe $80 in gas. Saves me like $2000/year minimum. Buying a car hasn't seemed sensible since moving to Vancouver, because the transit is so good, and I'm not rich and don't want the liability of owning one when the job market disappears (now).
Not that there aren't reasons to own one here mind you, surely a long and unwieldy commute might do it, but then you're probably in Delta or a suburb, which was my situation when I last had one; after it was crashed, I just didn't buy another and realized that I used it more because I had it rather than having it to help me go distances I'd need to anyway.
I’d argue the opposite, but it’s certainly subjective. Driving my sister’s Model 3 was leagues below my cheap little BRZ, and it’s still slower than my motorcycles if I want to accelerate fast. The suspension is crap. Body roll was astoundingly bad and the front end doesn’t want to push you through corners when trail braking. I was excited to drive it, but after 500 miles of backroads and open freeway I firmly believe a cheap sports car is a much better driving experience.
I've never driven a cheap sports car, so I might agree with you. However, my subjective take is, between otherwise similar non-sports cars, the EV is more fun to drive. For a few reasons, I can't realistically have a purely fun car at the moment.
I think, then, you're the perfect target for a well-established EV platform. Don't listen to naysayers, I'm sure you're not a shill l(ike this whole thread seems to think about anyone pro-EV.)
Personally, I'm in a spot where my "perfect car" is a cheap sports car with two seats and a bunch of turbo lag. But I can see the appeal of having main car be an electric horsepower monster with a squishy ride.
IMO the lack of fumes/exhaust is my favorite part of owning an EV. Sure there are some downsides with EVs (more expensive to buy, less range, lack of public charging infrastructure) but those don’t impact me and I’d gladly take the negatives for a car that doesn’t smell every time I park it in my garage.
> Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.
well that depends on the ICE car and your driving behaviour. E.g. VW group turbo 4 cylinders from ~5y ago are very efficient. I drive a 5yo Seat Leon ST (basically like a slightly smaller Golf Variant, e.g. a typical European hatchback), and mostly at highway speeds with some mountain driving also. With this I get ~45-47mpg or ~5.0-5.2l/100km. A hybrid would maybe get me up to 50mpg but not much more, as highway speeds are not really where they gain you much. They're great for the occasional shopping run, but where I live those are max. 20min driving both ways, so not that much of an impact either.
Absolutely! But most ICE vehicles people drive don’t get anywhere near that type of mileage because we tend to be buying much larger heavier cars. Hybrids help a lot of people get god level mpg and the reduced running costs without needing to go all in on electric
As "someone with a Toyota hybrid": I consistently use about 1l/100km than that. (The dash keeps a "best milage" number, which is 3.8l/100km for me right now.
At some point it becomes bike shedding, but a 20% reduction (from 5l to 4l) is still impressive to me.
Indeed. Is that also at highway speeds? And what generation is it, I’m guessing a Prius? Afaik e.g. a Corolla with comparable trunk space as my Leon doesn’t get that low.
To be fair I am mostly on rural roads (70-100 km/h) during my commute. But if I am not doing WFH I M doing 100km per day and with our family car that equated to >10€ Gas per day.
So getting a used car with great milage was a reasonable decision to me.
As "somebody who just bought a 2013 Toyota Yaris Hybrid":
Full EVs are for some selected few... Here in Germany it's just homeowners with PV already installed. I did the math before deciding on the hybrid and literally everybody else is paying more for electricity (at 0.4€/kWh) and is producing more CO2 (at avg. 400g/kWh).
I really pity the guys in their Dacia Spring SUVs in the supermarket parking lots (at 0.6€/kWh) who bought a EV to "do the right thing" here.
(That said, that's a problem very unique to Germany ... Most countries around us have cheaper electricity and a smaller CO2 footprint per kWh.)
I think the savings argument often misses the context of discount rate: the NPV of the savings is a lot less than the total savings, especially with high interest rates.
I tend to keep my Vehicles longer than most people, currently I drive a 2015 model.
All that savings goes out the window if I am hit with with $40,000 to $60,000 repair bill to change the battery, even if my entire drive chain goes out in my ICE I am looking at probably $5,000 and that rarely happens.
batteries 100% will need replaced, and ICE can go decades with no major issues
The grid not being able to handle recharging electric cars in every home, does not agree with your purist stance. Switching to hybrid vehicles, or an efficient generator at home, would be a responsible stopgap.
For sure. But “stopgap” isn’t keeping a car for twenty years despite the flooding and storms and heat waves and that sort of thing over those decades. Moving some stuff to hybrids for a while isn’t a terrible idea. As well, moving some trips onto small electrics like bikes or tuk tuks. Lot of ways to mitigate the problem. My purist stance isn’t “do it my way only” but “gas burning has a major issue”.
Since I grew up and left home, my dad kept using an inefficient freezer from the 1950's, my own family went through 5 of the newfangled energy-saving freezers, prompting me to question the environmental friendliness of most modern appliances, and cars.
Remember to factor in the supply chain, and shipping costs.
If we keep burning the fossil fuels we are going to keep increasing the temperatures. If we switch the power plant the freezer is plugged into to
power the freezer and the powerplant the factory making freezers is plugged into, and replace the trucks moving the freezers around, we improve the odds of a nice world in fifty years, regardless of whether or not the freezer is low tech cheap junk or not.
One needs to distinguish carbon dioxide and methane from your run of the mill toxic chemical pollution. It isn't a linear sum of "pollutants" but different substances with different effects.
You might want to look into the science a bit more. The carbon burn is already having consequences all over the place. Transportation and energy are about 65 percent of the emissions, and solar, batteries, and electric vehicles are pretty simple ways to mitigate the harms. Cows are only about six percent of emissions, so relatively less important.
I don’t understand why this simple physical problem of absorbing more infrared radiation has become confused with class warfare. I don’t think the US manufactured batteries are more tied up in child,labor than like regular clothes and chocolate, and ending child labor across the globe is mostly independent of how we power transportation and energy.
There is a lot of greenwashing, but actually converting sectors of the economy to non-fossil fuel is not an example of that.
> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)
Our utility offers very cheap prices at night, so our Tesla 3 costs $2.25 to fully charge vs. $55-70 for our Forester.
> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10.
It's not that simple because "full" means something very different in a Cybertruck (123kWh battery) vs a base Ioniq 6 (53kWh battery).
Likewise the fuel economy is dramatically different with the Cybertruck at 2 miles/kWh Vs the Ioniq 6 at 4.6 miles/kWh.
Assuming a cheap electricity rate of $.15/kWh, the Cybertruck will cost $.07/mile to drive.
The Ioniq will cost $.03/mile.
The regular hybrid Prius gets 56 mpg. At the cheapest current (i.e. Texas) gas price of $3/gallon, it would cost $.05/mile to operate.
It will be far less performant than either the Cybertruck or the Ioniq 6, though.
> One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.
The disparity is still around 28%, which when talking about efficiency is pretty big.
> Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.
> One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's?
We aren't lithium constrained, we are battery manufacturing capacity constrained. One goal of the IRA (and its EV incentives) is stimulating the build-out of a domestic battery manufacturing supply chain. That battery production capacity is a strategic asset, not just for cars, but also for stationary storage. It's a win-win for energy security and decarbonization.
There are also plugin hybrids that use smaller batteries, but let you use either/both electricity and gasoline (albeit with an efficiency penalty on both drivetrains).
Also, 67% of Americans live in single family homes (mostly suburbia), many with an electrical outlet near their parking spot that they can use to charge their cars. These are also the people who drive the most on a per capita basis.
> If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.
Depends on the young person. For one thing, I wouldn't recommend that any young person buy a new car unless they are very financially comfortable. But if you don't have a home charger (or nearby DC fast charging) it's not a matter of a recommendation, but rather a physical requirement to get an ICE car, so it might as well be a hybrid.
The Cybertruck is a bad example, being a car that doesn't really exist (they've sold what, a hundred cars?) and that has at best a tiny niche market (man children living their boyhood dreams of driving a Transformer).
> The Cybertruck is a bad example, being a car that doesn't really exist (they've sold what, a hundred cars?)
Then sub the F150 Lightning or the Rivian and you'll get basically the same numbers.
> and that has at best a tiny niche market (man children living their boyhood dreams of driving a Transformer)
I agree with the customer characterization (although I suspect that number of such people out there is higher) and from an efficiency perspective it's just as bad as it's more conventional looking EV truck competitors.
I drove from Reno to LA recently in a Model Y and my charging stops all lined up with bathroom breaks and food. I never actually waited for the charging process itself. It doesn't take 45min and it's not like I have any interest in sitting for more than 3h-4h straight without stopping at all. I've done plenty of long distance trips with my kids and the Tesla and, really, charging is a non-issue.
The only actual negative I have is that chargers aren't as present in remote locations and if it's not a Tesla charger, it's not real. Also when towing a camper uphill to Yosemite, it was stressful but we made it on top.
As more and more people buy EVs, it's not uncommon that the charging infrastructure is not expanding at the same rate. Many EV owners I know, have all experienced to wait in a line for 15 min charge on a trip. Those that have had a Tesla for 7-8 years all agree that it is a relatively new thing.
The infrastructure will improve and will expand to keep up, but it is one of the teething issues that is slowing mass adoption.
I prefer stopping every four hours, and making the stop take less than 10 minutes. Having my EV is very much worth it overall, but it _is_ annoying to add more than an hour for every eight hours of driving.
I’m in that first group too and I bought a new car in 2023. I went ICE ultimately because I didn’t see many electric options I would want. Cars are part fashion so I wanted to “like it”. But I also mostly car about reliability and longevity as I usually buy new but keep for 10-12 years and don’t want the inconvenience of maintenance beyond the routine stuff. In the past, this put me in a Honda/Toyota but this time I was open and even wanted something more luxurious/expensive.
Most EVs are just unproven in my opinion. Just because it says Mercedes, nice test drive I don’t want to be their EV Guinea pig in terms of long term ownership. Companies like Rivian, cool but way too new for me to even blink an eye at. This basically left me with Tesla as an only option. If you do any research at all you’ll hear/see how hit and miss their build quality is. Seems worse on certain models, but ultimately I also know too much about Musk’s management style and it does the opposite of instilling confidence in the product. I also happen to just not “like” the interior/dash setup. So, I just felt like I was sacrificing /risking too much with EV. The other issue in some cases, the EV has been announced with a release date and accepting deposits but I couldn’t actually purchase one like I needed/wanted too; Too much friction in 2023.
I ended up in a Lexus. Basically the luxury Toyota. So i essentially kept my purchasing behavior unchanged due to not finding any compelling EV, but i kicked some EV tires.
Yeah I have that long standing impression too. Heard a lot of bad stories over the years on all the German manufacturers except maybe VW. It was something I considered sacrificing on as it seems the be a luxury tax of sorts. They do make more luxurious vehicles than Lexus, but it’s pretty marginal IMO after consideration even on their ICE vehicles. I’d probably have gone with a loaded GM/Ford over a German vehicle. Domestic manufactures also have a dealership problem though. They are the sleeziest of them all and I just really get turned off by it. Also, I didn’t need a tank in the Yukon but also didn’t like their smaller SUVs as much.
Once I had a shortlist, I looked into the option. I think 2 offered it, including the Lexus model I ended up with, however there was no actual inventory available and IIRC it would have taken 6-12 additional months to actually get one. Supply chain issues were still present and I had already been avoiding/delaying my purchase for about 2 years because of that. I most likely would have chosen that option had it been available in a more reasonable time span.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a 45 minute charge stop in many trips between California and faraway places including Colorado, Montana, and Texas. These are not day trips. People read stuff and just believe it without questioning. Most of my charge stops are much quicker than what you think. 10 minutes usually. Sometimes 20 or
more ahead of a long desert stretch where gas stations are also few and far between, but usually 10.
The most priceless thing though is safety for your family. I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old
gas cars, and it’s just sad to me that they didn’t see the options for what they were, and could have easily afforded a much safer car, but instead based their choices on bad information about supposed long charging times and supposed long lines at chargers.
I'm sorry I was with you until you started talking about safety? Gas cars are not inherently unsafe. Yes, a lot of EVs have very high crash safety ratings but I'd be willing to bet a volvo is safer overall even if tesla has managed to game some scores. I will admit that evs typically have a much lower rollover risk, but frankly stability control will not let you drive a car beyond it's limits. Even a hulking SUV is pretty hard to rollover these days.
I'm sure Volvos are safe (definitely far behind Tesla though, I've owned multiple of both) but now knowing that Volvo is a China owned company, I would never buy one for that reason, nothing to do with safety.
From what I can tell Elon is actually a good guy. I think he gets a bad rap because a lot of people believe everything they read and regurgitate it without question. They almost never provide specifics — your comment is a case in point — and if they do it’s totally trivial stuff
where he’s just being a person. We’re all imperfect; he’s just more open.
I had a bet with my partner if leaving this comment would attract Elon apologist fans and how many. Theres only one of you which means I lost 5$. Damn you.
In all seriousness I really wish SpaceX and Starlink werent associated with Musk because they are amazing. Tesla less so, Teslas are mostly a status symbol.
People absolutely provide specifics. How about the times he keeps firing people who disagree with him? Or when he sexually assaults people? Is that “just being a person”?
The first one, he has the right to fire jerks. So that’s kind of a non-issue. Happens in every company, but when he does it, it makes the news.
The second one is just a vague smear; I don’t know where you got that one but it sounds made up. Or you may be confusing him with someone else.
That’s about all people pull out. Smears, unfounded and unsourced and decontextualized accusations, stories of lawsuits filed by what seem like bad actors looking for a payday, etc., no substance.
Perhaps without meaning to, you have amplified my point.
Next youre going to tell me he engineered and designed Tesla, Falcon Heavies and Starship.
It is always the same with you Musk fanatics. Is it an appeal to authority thing because hes rich? What is it about Musk in particular that makes people of a certain bent feel the need to appear out of the woodwork and defend his honor?
But it’s the reverse of what you’re talking about. It’s what drives the baseless critics of Elon. You can see the level of emotion by their use of words like “fanatics” to describe people who dare to so much as suggest thinking for yourself.
What drives the fans? Or “fanatics” as you say? I guess just annoyance at people still channeling so much money to the likes of MBS. We should be moving past that world, not supporting companies that are doubling down on it.
Also annoyance at the Karens of the world. Live and let live. Appreciate humor. Lighten up. If you’re not onboard with helping big projects that improve things, fine, but it shouldn’t be some big unfathomable mystery why some of us do appreciate i.
Considering that I the first, second, third, …basically every result for a search of “Elon Musk sexual assault” references the incident in question, your claim that you have no idea what I’m talking about either shows that you’re playing dumb or not willing to do a single search to look up what other people are talking about. Why are you surprised when people push back on you saying he’s basically a great guy? Of course you’ll have that viewpoint if you ignore everything that points to the opposite being true or just never look at it. If you’re going to make the argument that Elon just has gamer moments or is constantly being vilified by the media I think that’s also completely false but at least it’s possible to respond to. If you’re going to go “look I don’t even know what you’re talking about” I don’t see how there’s anything more to discuss.
…alleged* incident. I had forgotten about that story since it was so thoroughly debunked right there in the article itself. But go ahead and believe anything you want, that’s your right.
> “This was a first for Autauga County,” the fire department wrote. “Electric vehicle fires are unusual and present unique challenges and dangers to firefighters.” The smoke from these types of fires contains toxic gases such as hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride, officials said. The batteries can also reignite even after they blaze has been put out, the fire department added.
"I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old gas cars" So the question becomes why is "I've read about" a valid response and how does it stand up against "I read about how dangerous EVs are in a random article somewhere online sometime"?
Now post a link abut how often fires happen in gas vehicles versus EVs.
"I read about" is only part of my response, and the rest of my response speaks for itself. One does have to poke beyond what one reads.
Poke beyond the dramatic headlines and you see that if EV batteries ever burn, which they usually don't even in accidents, they always make the news, but they burn slowly, giving occupants ample time to get away assuming they avail themselves of the easily grasped and intuitively placed manual door releases.
Fires happen less often with EVs... but if they are 20x worse and spew worse toxic chemicals? Then how is it "better"? People get away slower but in exchange for batteries that cost tens of thousands to replace? Strip mining to get the rare earth minerals? etc.
"one has to poke" definitely... which is why the "i read" line really stands out as a limited comment which I am poking at. The notion that EVs are "better" is an interesting view considering the cost to make, the dangers and the waste left behind.
1.5 years to have spent less on gas compared to electricity is what I assume you're saying... YOU get paid back for getting a car marked down by government programs that make the car cost less than it should and in exchange you have a vehicle that will be last a lot less because the batteries can't be affordably replaced.
I question that assertion as most of the math that I've seen behind those equations gloss over the creation of "green" tech (battery creation is not green. megatons of windmill blades in landfills is not green. unrecyclable stuff, etc). It also glosses over the long tail problems (recycling, or to be more accurate the lack of).
I'm not buying that assertion because it's pointing at a tree and ignoring the forest of problems. Its a rosy glass tinted answer designed to ignore the greater conversation.
No, for pollution. You spend less than on gas on day one, and your car doesn’t stink to boot. Gas cars stink and cost more. You can get a Model 3 for less than a Corolla now.
>less on gas compared to electricity
I think you had a typo there, it is backwards.
Cars are recycled all the time. Nothing new there. If you’re thinking of batteries, one, they don’t need to be replaced for hundreds of thousands of miles, and two, it is affordable, and, for recycling of materials in batteries, JB Straubel who used to be an executive at Tesla has a startup that is solving that problem cold. A lithium battery is one of the richest sources of lithium out there; there’s no way they would not be recycled now that we have scale.
"its backwards" Probably but we both got the idea I was pushing - which I stand behind. The cost in electricity vs gas does tilt towards electricity but that excludes the cost creating and the lack of recycling options.
"recycling happens all the time" Sure for some stuff... but electronics are not in a good spot on recycling.
Batteries are expensive. Insurance is expensive. Getting materials is expensive (and destructive). Recycling electronics and batteries is expensive (and thus filling up landfills).
I'm sorry but at the end of the day? The "solution" of green tech is no solution so far. It's simply promises and ignoring the problems because gas "stinks".
"Shit is real" my above statement is real as are the problems with "green".
Agreed :) I've driven a Wrangler since I got my drivers license (nearly a decade ago) and I am just waiting for the day I am side swiped or my car rolls over due to some unforseen accident. Whether it's my fault or not. I love my car but the safety ratings are abysmal and I for one look forward to the day I have a savings high enough to afford a safe EV.
> The most priceless thing though is safety for your family. I read about accidents people had in their nice 5 year old gas cars, and it’s just sad to me that they didn’t see the options for what they were, and could have easily afforded a much safer car, but instead based their choices on bad information about supposed long charging times and supposed long lines at chargers.
Huh? On what basis do you believe EVs on the market today are safer than their ICE counterparts?
It all depends on how much importance you put on those few road trips per year. With an EV those few road trips definitely take slightly more time, but the rest of the year (assuming you can charge at home or work) you never go to a gas station or charging station and almost certainly save vastly more time over the entire year.
> I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
With fast charging you typically only stop for 15-25 minutes, the infotainment or app does the planning for you, and the frequency you'll have to stop at matches the natural frequency people typically need to stop anyways by design.
"It only takes 5x longer to charge at some specific charging stations that may or may not be conveniently located for your trip, I don't know what's the big deal"
I can see how EV cars are good options for people who live in the city and only go grocery shopping, but for people who have family scattered around the country / continent with young children or babies, it sounds extremely inconvenient.
I have personally found Supercharging to be too fast at times. Multiple times I've had to unplug and move the car because it finished charging before I was ready to leave the restaurant/store. I think people underestimate how long they spend stopped on road trips.
Not so much an advantage, but a counterpoint to the misinformation that says EVs take 45+ minutes to charge on a Level 3 charger. And also to counter the false belief (present only in EV debates, strangely enough) that the average stop on a road trip is ~2 minutes.
Agree, the average stop is not 2 minutes even with a car, it's not what I was saying. I'm saying that quite often, though, it is really only 2 minutes, and in my opinion, in those scenarios having to deal with a 20 min forced wait time is annoying, and people insisting that "having a nice meal next to the Supercharger" is a valid counterargument is annoying.
Sure, if EVs work out for you, that's awesome, but let's not pretend that the 20 minutes wait time cannot be a disadvantage for some people.
I drove Chicago->SF recently. I had to stop for bathroom breaks before gas ran out. And then you might as well fill up the gas and get something to eat. And you should stretch your legs for 5-10 min. Oh what do you know, by now my EV has enough miles to do the same all over again in about 300 miles. And I made the trip in 2 LONG days (36 hours of driving). And EV would not have slowed me down on this breakneck pace. I have no idea where all these families are road tripping off to who have to beat some world record time.
I'm a Chicagoan. A friend of mine from high school is big into long haul EV trips (in his Tesla); every couple of weeks I get a trip report. It never seems to be as simple as you're making it out to be; he always seems to hit pretty substantial charging delays. Nothing that makes the trips untenable --- he's sold on it. But it's not like "charging just fits into what you'd normally do at a rest stop".
This is a very valid point. Recently I joined the EV bandwagon for an EV6 and I was super nervous about not being able to fill up at every corner. I've had it a month or so, and I haven't even installed a charger at home or work yet. I'm getting around to it, but it has not been a requirement.
There's a local DCFC that's really fast to 80%, and a fair amount of 5-7kw chargers that are SUPER cheap at places I go near.
I've learned to just live more slowly because of it and I'm ok with that. I drive slower and safer, I know when I need to charge might be a good time to take a walk or grocery shop or something, and I just kind of plan around that.
Heck, sometimes I sit there and read a book in peace and quiet. I can't speak for people who have kids; I might not want to deal with that, but as a married adult without kids I'm totally fine.
My brother in law has done a 21 hour trip (according to google maps) in 20 before. Stop when the gas gauge is at 1/4, and everyone better be back in the car before the pump stops or they get left behind. His wife refuses to do that again, it is very hard on the body (and not safe at all)
Can one drive continuously without rest stops for more than a couple of hours with children in the car? Even when I'm driving alone, 2 hours is absolutely the limit before my knees force me to stop and stretch my legs for a bit. As long as the charging locations are numerous enough and have all the facilities that people with many children need, isn't it easier to just do both at once? If there are not enough reliable charging points with restaurants, bathrooms, etc., I understand your objection.
I can go longer and I could force the kids to go longer but the overall mood is crankier than with more frequent stops.
This isn’t really an EV topic but a philosophy of life topic: do you plan to have a relaxed time or do you push thru to minimize your metrics. Funny these people seem to end up in couples.
Tho, on the EV topic, my son now borrows the Tesla for roads trips and has discovered that long trips are faster going 65 than 75 or 80 or whatever he was doing because the increased efficiency cuts down on total charge time. He has been showing up to places early. It’s weird.
Sigh. As someone who just made two different 27 hour drives across the country in the last 6 months, I can tell you this is completely fine. Driving on major US highways you will always be able to plan it out and find one. Plus, I took longer breaks of that size anyway because every 2-3 hours I needed to get out of the car and stretch. Having forced time to get out of the car for a longer trip would have been beneficial for me.
And what if I want to drive on roads that are not one of the handful of major highways?
And what if, unlike you, I can manage to sit down for more than 2-3 hours?
The mental gymnastics are so weird to read. It's like .. for a horrible analogy, you're trying to defend a power drill which no longer drills, by saying "well hey, it works just fine, as long as you want to use it as a hammer and not as a drill, and hey, having to rotate it manually to actually screw something in is actually a good thing because it's good exercise".
Interesting that you and I evaluated who EVs are good options for completely differently. I've considered getting one for many years but only felt doing so made sense now that I'm moving out of the city to the country in a few weeks.
It never made sense before because I didn't have anywhere to plug an EV in nor did I want the hassle of street parking two vehicles. I have a 4x4 for offroading, mountain biking, and other weekend trips but getting around town on bike/foot/transit was faster day to day.
Now that I have a house and land getting an EV as a daily driver for the 20 to 100 mile round trips I take into town/the city actually makes sense since I have plenty of space to keep multiple cars, can install the necessary charging (and solar) equipment, and don't want to die riding my bicycle on unlit country roads.
That’s disingenuous because while pumping gas you remain with the vehicle (because it’s quick). With charging an EV, you charge while going inside to use the bathroom and get food. Provided there are available chargers and it is as convenient of an experience as a Tesla charging in a Supercharger, it’s very quick to set up.
I drive a lot by myself and can see the convenience of popping it on a charger while running in. I am in and out very quickly, but even that short time can add reasonable distance. With small children it takes longer and you get more of a charge.
It's not disingenuous at all, in fact I think your argument (that I hear over and over again) is misleading or missing the point completely.
Sure, if you need to charge exactly when your family gets hungry or tired and you happen to be exactly at a Supercharger, and the restaurant is exactly the kind of restaurant you like, it's not worse (but not better either) than traditional cars. If any of those conditions are not met, it's now an inconvenience charging your car.
In my experience (Europe), you can't really drive longer than 10 minutes without passing by a petrol station, and you can put gas in your car, pay, and leave easily under five minutes. Then, if everyone in the car feels like it, you can drive again for hours. If someone wants to eat, you can look up which restaurant you want to go to, and stop there. Eat your sandwiches at the top of the mountain while the sun is shining! Or pick anything else you want, Thai, local, Burger King, or get some snacks at a supermarket. ! I can decide which restaurant I go to or where I take my 30 min break, and it is not decided for me by the charger network.
Doesn’t sound like an EV is going to fit in the exact experience you want. That’s ok.
I don’t have an EV, but do drive long distances a lot. I regularly drive for six hours without stopping. I have been scoping out the feasibility of getting an EV and it seems that the Long Range style vehicles would just almost fit into my traveling without any disruption.
this isn't quite accurate. fast charging isn't available everywhere. did a road trip within california a few years ago and our model 3 ruined our trip on the drive from yosemite to sequoia national park. fast chargers became non existant to the point where we had to stop for 2 hours to wait for some low charge place to get us to 40% so we could make it to the next fast charging place.
i'm sure happy path traveling is great, but it becomes stressful as hell very quickly
Right. It's the situation where if everything goes well it's wonderful, but if not it's hell. Until level-3 chargers are available every 25 miles EV's aren't viable for long-distance travel.
"I did a long trip no problem", you say.
Would that have been as pleasant if 10x the number of electric cars were on the road? If you had to wait 45 minutes for a charger to become available due to demand? I doubt it. I have an EV (not a Tesla, one on the CHAdeMO standard) and I love, love, love it for driving around the city, but I don't dare take it on longer trips. Even doing a lot of driving in a single day is dicey in the winter.
Until the charging network is as ubiquitous and reliable as gasoline pumps, EV's will remain a niche.
(I once paid close to $10 USD / gallon (after converting from cpl) diving from Banff to Jasper at a station that had 4 pumps and on that day, a 10 minute wait to get to one of the pumps)
I recently changed job; I used to fill my car every week now every other week. (60 miles roundtrip to 30 miles roundtrip)
I also have some times where I have to drive 10.2 hours(730 miles one way) almost non-stop. When I have to do something like that, I want to drive. Not stop and wait.
The Tesla trip planner with the Model 3 Long Range edition for that drive show it will take 13h for the same drive so about 28% longer with 4 stops @ 30min each.
it would be cool if people felt like the environmental benefits were enough and didn't have to muddy the waters with made up other factoids.
if you want to buy an EV for the environment, great, more power to you, but stop trying to convince people that it's reasonable to sit and wait 45 minutes every few hours. You may find that acceptable but many of us don't.
I wouldn't find it acceptible but also I don't do that. Like people said more like 15 minutes. There's some art to it - don't charge to full during the trip, and to reduce your trip time, reduce your velocity to lower than max safe speed.
I do find it would be reasonable to pass laws to force you to switch to an EV even if it causes you some inconvenience, so that the likely future of my children and their peers is better.
I plotted from Atlanta, GA to Harrisburg, PA. You can do the same, it calls for 2 ~ 25 minute charges and 2 ~ 30 minute charges.
That's not "more like 15 minutes."
I would assume their trip planner is already calculating the optimal balance of speed and charge.
>I do find it would be reasonable to pass laws to force you to switch to an EV even if it causes you some inconvenience, so that the likely future of my children and their peers is better.
I am glad that you are willing to restrict the ability of people to live their lives because it won't have an inverse impact to you.
This thread started with the parent belittling someone else for not having the same use case. It is a shame that it has continued in that direction rather than explore ways to capture all use cases.
My data is mostly from having driven around longish trips on the West Coast where I expected it to be a much worse experience than it was, between the bath room breaks, food, faster charges when empty, etc.
If you haven’t tried it, I don’t think the idea that the route planning software gives does not reflect the actual experience, at least my experiences. Now I am not a hardcore stay in the car ten hours driver so YMMV.
The technology is getting rapidly better, all the use cases will be addressed before the fleet turns over. I had a leased Leaf in 2016 which was a lot worse than the used Model 3 I picked up in 2020, and the options I expect to have if I buy again seem to all be better each year. So far tho, the Leaf was destroyed in a pretty small fender bender, the Model 3 is holding up well.
That’s why the phase out is for a long time and involves public subsidies.
I have ridden in cabs that were owner operated that were electric already. TCO was better for the owner despite their great cost consciousness. And a lot of poorer people drive very efficient cars, it’s the rich that tend to be the “showy wasters of resources, screw every one else” folks.
It would be cool if we accepted that while the technology is getting better, it is not there for some use cases and people.
28% more is significant and just understand that we are not just talking about time spent. You factor that into my trip and suddenly I am awake for 2 more hours, more chance of a crash. Multiply that across the population and see what that does to death rates.
Most people live in a family situation where they have more than one car. They could replace one ICE car with an EV and not have any problems, the ICE becomes the family vacation car.
Realistically having done road trips, it's stopping every 3 hours and it's not 45 minutes, it's basically the amount of time it takes to get 2 kids out of the car, in to use the restrooms, and back into the car.
Tangent: As someone driving a gas car, I would like to know how your car takes only 2 minutes to refuel. 5 minutes? Certainly, if the station is not getting heavy traffic (which seems to slow the pumps), and on a long trip it's quite likely it will a busy interstate-side station that might get to ten minutes due to slow-flowing gas.
Even so, as we both know, it's unlikely to reach 15 minutes as discussed else-thread, and while I do need breaks on a trip, 15 minutes is about the maximum I want to take unless I'm eating.
Maybe it's a North America thing, but I can't think of a (purely ICE) car here that has anything smaller than a ~13 gallon tank... Maybe there are a few with 10-12 gallon ones, but they'd be outliers for sure.
For a typical family-hauler that's be used on road trips like a Honda Odyssey, 16-20 gallons is totally common.
Huh, I'm in the SF bay area with a prius (advertised as a 11.9 gallon tank, but due to one thing or another, it's never more than 7 even when beeping at me to refill. But I do agree that pretty much every time I fill up and look at what the previous car used, it's some crazy high number in comparison.
We're in the first group and it definitely makes sense for us. 90% of our driving is in town, and we can recharge at night in our garage for a small fraction of the cost of gas. We also have 2 young kids. For vacations, camping trips, etc., we would take our Forester (which we already had before we bought an EV), but otherwise we don't need to use it. If we only had one car (and we did for years), we'd keep the EV and would rent an ICE SUV for long-range vacations (which, this being the U.S., we get precious little of), and still save tons of money.
I've charged my EV at a public charging station less than 5 times in the past year. Instead of a 5 minute stop once a week at a gas station it's 5 seconds every time I get home to plug it in.
Any trip within a 3 hour drive is possible round trip on a single charge. Any trip within a 5 hour drive is possible with no stops and destination charging, actually saving a stop.
Any trip over a 5 hour drive generally takes less time and costs less to fly (I'm sure with many edge cases around rural destinations). Even on long road trips, charging from 20-80% takes 15-20 minutes and most drivers will at least need a bathroom break every 3-4 hours.
New Tesla Model 3 prices are comparable to entry level sedans like the Civic and Camry. Used Chevy Bolt's are abundant at <$20k with much less ongoing maintenance costs versus used gas cars. There aren't yet affordable large SUVs and trucks if those are your only vehicles in consideration.
2024 Camry XLE with Nav and Cold Weather - $36,965
Tesla Model 3 - $38,990 - without any credits or subsidies.
But worth noting two things - first, there may be significant State tax credits for buying a Model 3, and the base Model 3 currently doesn’t qualify for the $7,500 Federal subsidy, only as of 12/31/23.
In other words, last week the base Model 3 was at least $7,500 cheaper than $38,990.
Why are you not comparing base prices? This is extremely misleading as you're misrepresenting the Camry and including the rebate (even though you say you're not).
According to their US websites, the 2024 Camry starts at $26,420. The Model 3 starts at $46500 (not including the $7500 rebate).
I just pulled the MSRP straight off “Order Now” on Tesla.com, I don’t know why you would see a different price.
Camry does have a lower end “LE” trim with cloth seats, 4.2” screen in center console, and also missing all of the following; navigation, sun/moon roof, heated seats & mirrors, smart key, driver assist / blind spot monitoring, memory seats, and power passenger seat… for $27,215.
The XLE trim is still lacking many Tesla features, but it’s at least somewhat more comparable to a base Model 3.
But still truly notable that 3 days ago the Tesla Model 3 was cheaper after tax credits in many states even than the starting base price of a Camry.
Hopefully the Model 3 battery sourcing can adapt to the changing tax credit regulations to have their base trim qualify again for the Federal credit. Currently only the Performance trim qualifies, which is funny in that it makes the Performance cheaper than the lower-spec’d Long Range.
Key word was "inventory", not the custom order. Inventory is what Tesla has in stock on their lots near your location and are sold at a slight discount to the custom order price. Look for "Inventory" on the website rather than "Order".
FWIW, this would be somewhat comparable to what a dealer would actually be selling on a lot for a Toyota, because in reality you can't really custom order from Toyota and have to just get whatever the dealer has for you, though they often give you all kinds of crappy add-ons plus a dealer markup and other nonsense.
>I'm going on vacation next week, driving with 2 young children. It'll be about a 11 hour drive which is not crazy for a US vacation. I don't want to plan where I stop and stop for 45 minutes to fuel up with 2 toddlers in the car.
How often do you do this? Once, maybe twice a year? With my current commute i have to go out of my way to get gas every week. It takes at least 15 minutes extra on my way home (but thats only because the gas station on the route is about $1 a gallon more). i'd be prepared to add an hour twice a year in return for getting 15 minutes back 48 times a year. And the annoyance of having to make an unexpected trip when i was planning to get gas the next day (whereas i could keep an EV charged abouve 50% at all times).
Get it through your heads, the frequency is irrelevant. We have this feature now with ICEs..and EVs do not. Some people will choose to stick with ICEs until such time that they reach parity in this department.
I would guess most single family home owners have two or more cars. This is a total guess based on my own situation and those of people I know who own EV’s but most EV owners with a single family home will also own a gas car.
So an EV is more convenient than a gas car for daily commutes because you never have to go to a gas station. For the rare times you go on a long trip, you just take the gas car or you put up with having a longer trip in the EV.
The average US household owns 2.28 vehicles. 35% of US households own three or more cars. I found that interesting because almost no household that I personally know owns more than one vehicle (regardless of income level), so there may be large geographical variances here.
Also interesting is that the total number of registered vehicles in the US declined by over 25 million between 2012 and 2019. There is hope!
Out here in the suburbs of Massachusetts, it is very common to see 3 (or more) cars in the driveways of single family homes. In my experience, it's usually because some of the cars belong to one or more of the kids who live there. And each parent usually has their own car.
Growing up, getting a car was a watershed moment for me personally. It marked a transition into a new type of independence from my parents, and also the primary motivation for getting my first job. It was liberating. Out here, it's not feasible to get anywhere, really, without a car. Before getting my own car, if I needed to get somewhere, I had to convince some adult (usually my parents or a friend's parents) to take us there.
> Also interesting is that the total number of registered vehicles in the US declined by over 25 million between 2012 and 2019. There is hope!
Really? Awesome! The future is bright indeed. EVs are objectively better than ICE-cars, they don't nearly trash up the city as much as ICE-cars (less noisy, less stinky, no gas stations, nothing trashes up a neighborhood than a gas station), but a lot feel like they have made strides in being safer for pedestrians, cyclists, ...
Hard to square with the overall increased aggressive vibe in overall traffic, more antisocial driving, larger cars, meaner looking cars, ...
I think a household will tend to average on how many adult drivers there are in the home. You don’t want to be stuck at home while someone else is at the gym, store, etc
Based upon the amount of comments here this must be a controversial comment but I can’t imagine how you do this. With one toddler, she can barely make a 1 hour trip let alone 11 hours. I could use an electric vehicle with a 90 mile range for that trip because that’s about how often I would need to stop. Props to you for keeping 2 toddlers in the car for 11 hours
Toughen up your toddlers ;) A decade ago we moved from one state (NY) to another (NC) with an 18 month old and a 6 year old. We did the 650 mile trip at night in way longer than 10.5 hours it should have taken due to horrible weather, traffic, etc...but we didn't stop for anything other than gas and one or two coffee breaks.
EV stops have a big advantage in that they force you to get out and move around a bit. Sitting in a car all day is bad for you. Taking a break every few hours is good. Walking around during that break is ideal.
You don't want to give yourself a blood clot on a family vacation.
Is there a name for when someone bends over backwards to paint a disadvantage as an advantage? I guess it's the same as the old "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" trope.
It's the opposite. Supposed advantages often get you into trouble.
Constraints, in this case not being able to drive for eight-straight hours, is a good thing. Constraints are often a good thing because they introduce just enough friction to prevent us from harming ourselves.
You can make this case for anything though, as with every advantage comes a downside. "Horse-drawn carriages have a big advantage in that they force you to not go as fast, and so they make crashes less fatal. Crashing a car is bad for you. Going slow is good."
This isn't a real argument though; how fast I go is my business, and how long I drive is my business as well. If I have two people in a car, we can trade off and solve your "driving too long" problem in a way that doesn't compromise ability. Nobody is going to buy this rationale. An EV can do less than a gas car (in this area), and it's just worse.
From your argument, it follows that we should push auto manufacturers to make the gas tanks of non-EVs smaller, so that it's impossible to drive for longer than 8 hours on one tank of gas. This is just a terrible position, it doesn't even merit being argued against.
In fact, making up rationalizations like this is so much worse than doing nothing, because it saps the incentive to improve things. If we delude ourselves into thinking that a car that can do less is better, then we'll never make it better, fewer people will purchase them, and we'll blame everyone else for not buying into our delusion.
I'd think a bit of inconvenience would be worth it for a better future for your children as well as all the world's children, but I've been around long enough to come to the understanding that that's just wishful thinking on my part; truly you are just one incredibly minuscule drop in the ocean of carbon emissions that will doom us. I don't envy young children the future world they're going to inherit.
Don't worry, at some point those children will grow up. They'll cease to be innocent victims, and will be forced into the same moral compromises that all adults are forced into. My only hope is that some of them will realize how silly their youthful generational blame had been.
I assume all of us heard something to the effect of "you'll understand it when you grow up". Fair enough, but I guess I never really grew up because the older I get, the less I understand any of this really. As far as I can tell, everyone is just trying to "get their kicks in before the whole shithouse goes up in flames" to quote Jim Morrison. I wish I could do that, but it seems to be beyond me not to worry about the future.
Contrary to stereotype, I don't think most adults are _intentionally_ passing the buck to the next generation so much as they are _incidentally_ passing the buck to the next generation. They don't know how to live without producing carbon & other waste, and there are practical expenses they need to answer for. (bills, family members, putting food on the table) Most adults don't have many skills beyond using the infrastructure which is laid out for them. (roads, cars, supermarkets, public schools, available careers, etc.)
And crucially, my point is that today's kids will simply not be in a better situation. They'll have the tools of society at their hands, and in general, not much more. I don't love child labor, but I genuinely have no practical way to know if my clothing was produced via child labor. (I buy 99% of my clothing used, so hopefully that's helping) I don't have any practical way to know if my plastic recycling isn't getting dumped in the ocean in Turkey. I'd like to use less carbon, but my wife isn't willing to live with the heat set any lower than 62 F. Etc. The impacts which I can make are pretty small. Populations are rising, and technology is not the panacea some people think. Technology can improve carbon output, but everyone needs to eat and live. This will always be deleterious to the environment, and the "victim" generation will eventually grow up to be the victimizers as they have to run governments and companies.
They'll be faced with compromises they can't avoid, no matter their politics.
I fully understand all this which is why I've become very sad for the future of humanity; I try to look for reasons for hope, but watching trees die in my hometown while wells failed was very hard. All I can say is that I'm increasingly happy I opted out of the idea of children long ago, because while I used to be jealous of the young for the future they would live to see, I feel exactly the opposite these days.
I’m excited to one day own an EV, but the prices need to come down and charging infrastructure needs to continue to improve. I have a house that I’d do most of my charging at, but I want to feel comfortable driving anywhere in the country just like I currently experience with gasoline powered vehicles.
I just did a road trip with my family (four kids aged 6-13). If we had an EV, I would have simply topped off the battery any time we stopped for a bathroom break (I get excited whenever we're able to pass a service plaza without someone needing to go).
You apparently don't live in the US, or at least not in the midwest. I know a lot of people who do trips longer than that. Many Canadians out in the middle do similar trips as well (well there are not many Canadians living in that part of the country, but the ones who are there do it)
I think the market for the current lineup of EVs is tapping out.
My wife and I own one that was very comparably equipped to a similar luxury crossover / SUV, and the type of driving we do in that car is perfectly within the capabilities of our range & charging habits. Never going to gas stations or getting the annual oil change is a nice convenient perk for us. But we fit right in this targeted demographic:
1) Can afford an expensive, new car
2) Own a home and can install an EV charger
3) Have a second ICE vehicle for long trips
However, I can't imagine many people wanting EVs who fit this criteria don't have one by now. If the manufacturers want to keep selling EVs, they'll need to figure out how to replace the 2015 Accords and Tahoes without access to charging at home.
Hi! I'm one of these people. All three of those conditions are true for me, and yet I don't own an EV. Why? Because it seems like the technology is going to be much much better and cheaper in 5 years or less, and I'd hate to drop a big ball of cash on a new EV today when I can probably get either a better new one or a cheaper used one in just a couple of years.
I've been thinking about this same thing lately since I will soon fit those conditions as well and I think at least for me personally this year may be the best time to buy one.
While I agree the technology will be better and cheaper 5 years from now that will always be the case and it seems like we are past the point of exponential improvements in short periods of time. Current EVs meet or exceed my needs regarding range, reliability, and performance so I don't have a quantitative goalpost that needs to be reached anymore.
What is really pushing me over the line though is changes to the relevant financial incentives. The new income caps mean I still qualify for the $7,500 tax rebate because I took a bunch of time off work in 2023 but will no longer be eligible after this year. I can't see the technology improving so much in the next few years it outweighs that discount combined with not having to wait.
It's obviously a matter of personal priorities. Someone might opt for 5 years of convenience vs potentially saving 10K and other person might opt to wait 5 years and save 10K.
Eh, I don't see it. Not a lot has changed in the last few years. They're all using lithium ion battery packs built around similar tech, and around 60kWh seems to be the standard sweet-spot. L2 charging is the most common (at home especially), and that hasn't changed in over a decade. They mostly have similar propulsion systems and similar efficiency. The good ones all have battery heating/cooling to extend battery life, and have for some time.
The only major thing that has really altered has been the speed of DC fast charging. Which, TBH, is something that is only used on road trips, and takes a toll on battery life if you use it frequently anyways. So while I'd love an EV with really high kW DC fast charge, it's not something I'd make as my primary concern.
FWIW, I'm in a 2017 Chevy Volt and drive it 95% electric only and have felt no real urge to upgrade. I'd love a bigger battery, and DC fast charge, I guess. But the actual electric driving experience isn't appreciably different on newer BEVs. I'll drive it into the ground for another 5 years, and then get an EV with a bigger battery.
Toyota and others have spread a bit of FUD with promises of solid state batteries and the like, but I actually think EV technology right now is pretty mature and good. What's needed is infrastructure for apartment buildings, and city streets etc. for charging and that will only happen once consumers push for it.
And, yeah, vehicle makers need to make economy-class EVs. That just hasn't happened yet in North America even though it absolutely could with battery prices being what they are now.
Uh, that market is far far from tapped out. Just drive around any neighborhood that likely fits those characteristics and the vast majority of cars you'll see are still ICE (maybe hybrid).
To say “definitely” don’t need one with near zero information on what a long trip constitutes is wild.
Do you tow anything on your long trips? Go into extremely cold environments? Go into areas with no or minimal charging infrastructure? Does the endpoint of your journey lack power outlets?
EVs aren't cheap either, in 2 years one will get better battery tech and a new connector, plus whatever deprecation the battery will go through if you buy one today. 2023-4 and earlier EVs will lose a huge chunk of their worth once NACS cars with better than 200 mile range become available
The value of my leased Volvo C40 has already fallen off a cliff and is less than my residual value. Once my lease is over there will be an NACS EX-30 that will be cheaper brand new, than what Volvo are charging for me to keep my old connector used battery car
Bolt starts at ~$26k. Civic starts at just under $24k. The Bolt is a mediocre road tripper, but lots of cars in that segment are just commuters that only very occasionally road trip. It'd be a great choice for a lot of people.
I don't want a $26k car. Back in 2014, I bought a base model Ford Fiesta for $14k. Modern cars are badly overpriced, which is part of why people are holding onto used cars so strongly.
Looks like it starts at 28.5. Low-end IC cars (with more range and convenience) start at ~15-16k new in the US. (Kia, Nissan, etc).
That's a huge difference when that's the price range you're shopping, with added benefits of higher issue rates and less convenience when it comes to charging.
While I'd argue anyone looking to spend under $20k on a car would be better suited going used/pre-owned instead of new, theres really not a price premium on new electric vehicles anymore.
The Chevy Bolt MSRP is $26,500[1] (not sure where you saw 28.5) but it qualifies for the $7500 rebate. In the past that was a tax write-off and you still had to pay sticker up front but it changed this year to be a credit the IRS gives the dealer at time of purchase so the price gets immediately knocked down to $19k.[2] Requires the purchaser be under the new income cap to qualify but that includes over 90% of people.
Theres only two new cars available in 2024 under $19k, the Nissan Versa and Mitsubishi Mirage. If we look at 2023 theres also the Kia Rio. All three are out of date cars with anemic engines (the Mirage literally makes 78hp) and 0-60 times of 10 seconds or more compared to 200hp and 6.8 seconds for the Bolt. None of the base models have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto unlike the Bolt. Same for safety features/creature comforts like lane assist and adaptive cruise control.
Otherwise the next cheapest new car available is the '23 Kia Forte which is a pretty fun car (and can reach highway speed before the heat death of the universe) which is actually in a similar tier to the Bolt and similarly priced at $19.5k.[3]
Theres definitely a lot of people who EVs don't work for logistically (myself included until only very recently), and yes you could buy one of three horrifying cars I would not force on my worst enemy for less, but manufacturers know they won't sell overpriced cars so the upfront cost of an EV aligns quite well nowadays with comparable ICE vehicles.
Bolt can absolutely fast charge, I've done it myself — the feature has to be added when purchasing, and it's limited to 55kW (~80% in an hour depending on conditions). The slower rate is partially how they kept the price down AFAIK.
Thankfully, DCFC is now standard! The rate isn't phenomenal, just as you pointed out, but this car competes with Civics. Many of those are purely commuter cars that might only very rarely do 300-400 miles.
IMO, having such a slow charge rate (Yes, 55 kW is slow) is extremely detrimental to EV adoption because it feeds into the narrative that it takes 45+ minutes to charge the car which just simply isn't true for any decent EV.
This is what frustrates me about EV makers that aren't Tesla. They frequently half-ass their EV and then get all Surprised Pikachu when they don't sell, and then they incorrectly just say "Huh people don't actually want EVs".
I'm not trying to sound like a Tesla fanboy (I own one, but I'm not a fanboy), but the Model 3 is the standard upon which any EV is going to be compared. If you don't support 250 kW charging with at least 250 miles of range, you're making a shitty EV that nobody will want. Sure, you can probably forgo the self-driving features, and the huge touch-screen interface is a bug more than a feature, but you cannot skimp on range and charging capabilities.
Yeah, I remember when Chevrolet bragged a lot about beating the Model 3 to market and how great it was. But it had optional fast charging of only ~50kw!
Their management really could not understand the idea that the prime consumer for this would be middle-class people in suburban homes, and that they'd want to occasionally road trip their nearly $40k EV. They'd imagine only people in urban areas would want them and then imagine this huge catch-22 around urban charging. Their early forays into charging partnerships all reflected that, with chatter about building lower speed urban locations.
Reality was so much different.
Having said that, prices have come down a _lot_ since that introduction. I think there are a lot of people who'd find it usable, given prices that are lower than a Civic with the current incentives.
I typically need to fast charge ~5 times per year. I'm in Portland, and my father-in-law takes us to Oregon Ducks football games in Eugene 3-5 times per season, and it's about a 220 mile round trip. In the early season while it's still warm, I can do that round trip without charging with no problem. But in the later, colder season, running the heat drains the battery more and I have to charge on the way back. We'll also visit my wife's best friend in Seattle once or twice a year.
For daily driving...well...I work from home, so I could certainly get away with the 110 outlet. Though when I got my car, I had a commute 30 miles each way. I could have probably still gotten away with a 110, but I got a 220 anyways. I can completely charge overnight, and that's good enough.
But like...charging time for road trips is blown way out of proportion. I've driven from Portland to Santa Clara and back. I think people hit Google Maps, it tells them a drive is 10 hours, then they hit ABRP or their Tesla's nav, and it reports 12 hours, and they think "wtf driving an EV is adding 2 hours", but they ignore the fact that the Google Maps estimate doesn't include any stopping. No restrooms, food, or gas. I found that during the entire road trip, only ~20 minutes total was spent actually just standing around waiting for the car to charge.
I had a guy on a Tesla forum one time that told me that an EV would be totally impractical for him. His reason was because he'd need to stop for so long to charge on a little trip of ~500 miles (maybe a little less) and there might not be chargers.
It turned out, he that little trip was along major interstates in California to Disneyland. They were already stopping 3 times for at least 15 minutes each in their gas car.
He still didn't want a Tesla. That's fine, of course. Horses for courses. :)
I never did figure out why he was on a Tesla owner's forum.
Look at Tesla, EVGo, ChargeAmerica, or just check out abetterrouteplanner.com to get a more complete picture of the charging network.
Chargepoint was the first to get a large charging network, but that gives them the disadvantage that a lot of their chargers are using the very oldest tech.
Sure, but we don't have to look past them to get to 50% market share. The market can grow by 5x without moving past them.
The problem in the US is that you have to have really large market share to start convincing property owners that they should install chargers. Thankfully, we are seeing this, with widespread installations at hotels this year. I'm guessing apartments won't be too far behind that in metropolitan areas.
More than that. My brother has a bolt and is looking at a road trip next week - 3 hour+ charge cycles are required to make the trip. If it could be 3 20 minute charges he would be much happier. (6 10 minute charges would be better). Most of the time he is happy with that car - he rarely goes on trips so far that he needs to stop, and when he does he planned to take the ICE minivan, but this time his wife needs the minivan so he is stuck.
Yeah, I wouldn't really get one if I had to go >350 miles on anything but extraordinarily rare occasions. But I have owned cars that fit that usage model really well.
I used to have a "second" car that was used as a commuter. It would only very rarely go on trips, and even then only up to ~300 miles.
If it had been an EV, it would likely have been more like a primary car, but the gas car would have been the backup for long trips.
What do you think current ranges are? There are very few EVs available with less than 200 miles of range. The Leaf and that Mazda thing are the only ones I know of.
An EV just doesn't do anything that my 2007 Pontiac Vibe doesn't do better. My car is worth about $3,000. It:
- Has a 400 mile range
- Can stop anywhere and refuel in just a few minutes, including very isolated areas
- Plays all the music I want
- Hauls anything I want (ie. I don't care if I trash the interior with a pile of mulch on a plastic tarp)
- I can sleep in the back
- Fits in nicely in my lower middle class neighborhood
- Has plenty of spare parts at the junkyard if I need to repair it
On top of that, it doesn't require a #$@# subscription, doesn't force me into some plutocrat's idea of an infotainment system, isn't tracked remotely, with that data being sold to randos, and doesn't cost as much as a Master's degree. Last thing is that while EVs are probably more environmentally friendly than a new ICE car, they still don't compete with a used one from the aughts over their lifetime.
This is where I am too. When I finally sold my ‘90-era beater, I upgraded to a 2009. It does everything I need it to, and importantly, doesnt have those anti-features of new cars (EV or otherwise). I don’t know what I’m going to do in 15 years when it’s time to sell this one. Car companies are not really making products for guys like us today.
To be fair to your last paragraph, you're less annoyed at EVs than at new cars in general. All new cars are trending towards this, with a few stragglers for the models that haven't been refreshed in a while.
Until you get in an accident. If you can afford a newer car, I hope your understandable affection for your Pontiac isn’t causing you to unknowingly significantly compromise your safety.
EVs that catch fire are impossible to extinguish. EVs that are involved in accidents are recommended to be stored 50 feet apart and monitored by thermal cameras due to the tremendous risk of battery fires. It is not economical to fix EVs at this time. Someone was just quoted $60k to fix a Hyundai Ioniq because of dents on the bottom panel. Insurance companies, parking garages, and ferries are beginning to wise up and want nothing to do with EVs.
Nevermind that half of the EVs out there don't have conventional mechanical door latches to let people out of the car should the power fail. EVs are far heavier than standard cars. I heard that they don't crumple as much either, to protect the battery from causing a bigger disaster. Rigid vehicles cause much more harsh deceleration in a crash, which is likely much worse for the people in the car. Look up the Youtube channels MGUY Australia or Geoff Buys Cars if you want some real dirt on EVs.
Passenger EVs are barely practical, risky, and not nearly as environmentally sustainable as the marketing says. EV trucks (consumer and commercial) are a sick joke.
There are little kernels of truth sprinkled throughout your comment, but much of it is FUD. EVs aren't chinese scooters primed to burst into flame at a moment's notice. They're as safe as gas cars (though i would like to see data on injuries per 100,000 mi instead of safety ratings as those can be gamed)
FUD is a bit dismissive of the risks. Yes, I am afraid of unextinguishable fires spewing toxic gasses, battery explosions, being trapped in a wreck, huge repair bills, and getting stuck somewhere on the road. I am uncertain because the media largely buries the issues with EVs. I have a lot of doubt surrounding EV adoption and especially mandates. So? Sometimes FUD is the smart position.
I never said EVs in good condition are ready to spontaneously combust. That has happened of course, but it is rare. The trouble is with crashes. The fire risk is by far the worst. An EV catching fire can ignite any vehicles near it, causing a chain of unextinguishable toxic fires. No wonder many repair shops want nothing to do with damaged EVs. I've seen several firefighters talk about how horrible these fires are. Of course, a chain of fires in a city parking garage is the worst case.
Safety stats for EVs are hard to come by, at least ones that could effectively answer my questions. There are confounding factors, such as the high prices of EVs, that would make EVs look safer.
You are right about safety ratings being gamed. EVs have a separate set of regulations they have to conform to. That's what I was alluding to. I've only heard about how EV safety ratings favor structural integrity of the battery over the occupants indirectly though. If you want to know more, the Youtube channels I mentioned discuss news articles about it. I don't have a bibliography, and search engines bury most anti-EV stuff.
> I am uncertain because the media largely buries the issues with EVs
I've read enough media to see the opposite. Tiny numbers of car fires are constantly getting exaggerated, meanwhile the steady stream of gas car fires get no discussion.
Even after the recall work was done, we had local surface lots that banned the Chevy Bolt. They didn't ban gas or diesel trucks with active recalls for car fires while parked. The differences in risk for a parking lot like that are negligible, but the constant barrage of media scare stories got to them.
As to fires, the data is interesting. They are less likely to catch fire overall. On average they are slightly more likely to catch fire while parked, but somewhat less likely to catch fire post collision.
Interestingly, the current data seems to imply lower overall risk of fires causing personal injury in an EV vs an ICE. Thankfully the odds of both are so low as to make the difference a rounding error.
Yeah, it is shockingly common to see stories about AP failure that turn out to be purely human driving. The press elevates some weird anti-Tesla narratives.
Of course, they are just quoting so it isn't lying, but sometimes it seems like they intentionally do the bare minimum research to keep from finding out the truth of a story.
There was a huge leap in auto safety from 2000 to 2010 due to the increased use of high strength steel. I don't doubt that a modern car today is after than a 2007 model, but by how much? 5%? 10%? It's very hard to quantify.
Also a lot of what makes modern cars 'safer' is the inclusion of nannyTech such as stability control, automatic braking, etc. All of this is great, but if you were already a safe driver, there's little additional safety for you personally.
The tragedy of the commons perfectly encapsulated. Until this government has the courage for top down intervention, either people choose to be part of the problem or choose to be part of the solution.
I'm not sure which side I'm on in your comment ;) Right now I'm focusing on the first 2 R's of the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, and recycle). I'm reducing my footprint by reusing an existing car and fixing it with used parts when I can. This vs saving a little carbon over long, long run by buying an EV? I still don't think an EV has a smaller footprint than a used ICE car but I could be wrong.
I was referring more to the large vehicle arms race.
> Right now I'm focusing on the first 2 R's of the 3 R's
> I'm reducing my footprint by reusing an existing car and fixing it with used parts when I can.
I'd agree that's probably the most environmentally conscious approach. I'm somewhat similar, holding on to an old car, but more almost out of spite than any sort of rational consideration haha.
I'm not sure which tragedy of the commons you're referring to. Do you mean that people shouldn't replace an old car with a new car just because the new one is safer, because of e.g. the impact on the environment?
the fact that people are caught in the safety arms race (which really just means buying a larger, heavier car). a rational decision individually, but trashes up the city and makes it less safe for everybody else, especially pedestrians and cyclists.
I don't need it to, and I don't need a separate room in my freakin' house for a car. I spend 5 minutes while I'm washing the windows and then it's done.
That last part is the problem. The "oh noes, it will take 4 hour stops to ... cccchhaarrrggeee" types need communication. They think it will take 1000 mile ranges to replace their Corolla.
You might not know if it you haven't seen the discussions with people who have 0 experience with EVs, but there's a ton of misinformation being actively spread.
> there's a ton of misinformation being actively spread.
Considering the debacle that was the Energy Secretary's 650-mile EV road trip[0], perhaps the misinformation isn't quite that. It doesn't matter if you can go 10% to 80% in 20 minutes, if none of the four EV chargers at a highway stop are free.
I personally rented an EV for a weekend trip to a major coastal metropolis (certainly one that professes to embrace the energy transition) a few months back. I picked a hotel that claimed that it had EV chargers. The reality on the ground was that only one of eight or so chargers was working, and that one was occupied by the same car during my entire stay.
If the stuff being spread was "road tripping EVs without the supercharger network is bad", I'd agree with you. After all, that was the takeaway of the article and it is true.
CCS networks are terrible. I rarely see one that is more than 75% operational. "EA" is so bad in places that they look like literal sabotage.
The supercharger network is a totally different world. And yes, I've done both to compare. :)
I'd take that even further. EVs make the most sense when all the conditions you noted are satisfied, _and_ the family can afford at least two cars, and it's not important that both cars have long range, and the family can afford the extra up-front cost of the EV. I've got a Nissan Frontier and a Nissan Leaf. The Leaf is older (2017) and has a degraded battery. (about 80% of its original life, and approximately 100 miles of range) The Leaf is very convenient for my wife, but primarily because she doesn't have a commute, and we have a more practical family car in situations where the EV won't cut it. Her mother lives with us, and also has a gas car as an additional backup.
We got the Leaf for $11k used, and if the EV were our only car we'd have had to spend significantly more on a car with much more range (at least 230 miles or more) and we'd have required the installation of a fast charger to handle the longer range. (120v charging is really pretty suitable for a car with only 100 miles of range.) All of these would have introduced significant costs and constraints, which were only offset by the very low price of a used Leaf, and the fact that we always have a backup option.
I meet all the requirements you listed, but I _also_ need to make a 310 mile trip (1 way) fairly regularly. In a Prius, I can do that on one tank. In an EV, you've added at least 30-60 minutes to each leg of the trip, unless you spring for higher end models.
So you're saying EVs make the most sense for "people who buy cars?"
Can't fault manufacturers for targeting that audience.
Anyway you are pulling on the thread of unique selling points (USPs) which are among the many prevailing traditions in autos sales. I don't know how much they really matter in a secular sense.
Not really. I'm saying that currently an EV fills a relatively small niche. For buyers without that specific niche requirement, an EV is usually overly expensive, or represents a pretty serious compromise in capability.
> I'm saying that currently an EV fills a relatively small niche.
You own two cars. Your family unit uses 3. You are the market. You are not the niche!
Think about personalization (upgrading trim). There are many fewer people who are interested in / need an expensive specific set of trim, but that's like 40% of auto industry profits. What you are calling a niche is the autos business.
Anyway most of the rest of the profits are financing, which is also all about getting people to buy cars every year or two or buy more than 1 car.
That said Tesla is so exceptional in their profitability. It remains to be seen if that's an outlier that will revert to the mean. They still derive significant profits from trim/personalization, like charging $5,000 more for sometimes literally disabling a software lock. But they also derive profits unlike other autos manufacturers from, essentially, subsidies and related, and for delivering Fisher Price fit and finish at Lexus prices. They recently started paying for advertising, which cost Toyota $1b a year for the decade Tesla hasn't been doing it, so I assume they will revert in everything else too.
So are EVs exceptional regarding their role, profitability etc. in the autos product mix? IMO no. If Tesla reverts to the mean, this is 100% true, and if it doesn't they are the exception to the rule.
> We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
From what I’m reading EVs are around 1% of total cars and around 10% of new car sales in the U.S., while at least 60% of housing units are single family homes.
But the vast majority do have driveways. In my WWI era neighborhood designed for horse-and buggies and later streetcars (must have been nice), nearly every 100 year old house has a driveway (carved from the 8-10 foot wide gap between the houses) and half of them have EVs in them. Most post-war suburban American single family homes have far more space than that for driveways for EV charging.
I'm on the single family home case and would really like to buy the ID Buzz to replace our Atlas (always wanted to own a Konbi) but it would be the second car in the home, we'd still keep our combustion SUV for the long trips and I think this is a lot of the current market for EVs.
Trouble is that pricing is awful, availability is also awful (there's still no date for when the Buzz will be around in the US) and I'm pretty happy with the gas price at the moment, so other than hype to buy a Tesla there's not much reason to buy electric at the moment.
> We may be close to saturating the market for the former group.
Not even close. Maybe 6% of the households in my neighborhood have an EV, and I have no reason to believe we don't represent the average upper middle class neighborhood. I would imagine that percentage to be considerably lower in middle class neighborhoods. That's why I say we're not even close to saturating the single family home market.
> EV’s currently make the most sense for people who own a single family home or otherwise live in a community with readily available near-home chargers, where EV’s are on average more convenient than gas cars
If they are full EVs and not PHEVs they also make the most sense for households that have multiple cars where one of the other cars is a gas car. While the vast majority of trips are short, and charger networks are improving, a lot of people in the US drive longer distances at least occasionally, so it is much easier to replace one out of two cars in a household an electric car than switch to only using electric cars.
I think that once enough people have EVs and the charger networks are better this will be less of an issue, but a lot of people seem to downplay this issue, which I think is not a good idea, because I think there's a genuine risk that there could be a chicken and egg problem to mass adoption of EVs where the market of people who are able to use an EV in 2024 could be saturated before enough people are using EVs to build out the charger network sufficiently.
>nother factor that could be at play is that all the non-Tesla EV makers have recently announced they will switch their chargers to NACS, but this will take a couple of years to roll out, so it’s not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware.
This is a big factor and one I note to anyone I know who is thinking of buying an EV. You don't want to be stuck with a dead end tech. Buying a non-Tesla that hasn't already adopted the north american charger is a foolish move at this point. I'm sure there will be conversion kits for many models at some point but that's another cost and one you likely want to have a professional do. Best to either buy a Tesla or just wait a year or two.
Somebody check my facts here, but isn't the NACS/Tesla charging standard just CCS with a different plug? Shouldn't the CCS-to-NACS adapters available today work seamlessly both now and in the future? Am I missing something here?
They are, but Tesla makes it difficult for non tesla owners to use their chargers as they have no built in 'pay here' infrastructure (at least from what I've seen)
> not a great time to buy a non-Tesla since it already has legacy charging hardware
there will be adapters that will make current models compatible with Tesla's network once the switch is made(at least for Polestar, not sure about other brands)
EV range is still lacking, compared to available charging stations, imo.
When the market gets it right, I'll jump in with both feet, but I'm not spending twice the money on a car, then deal with horse shit like Tesla and others when it comes to service visits, scheduling, etc.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
So, from that we're to conclude that electric cars are doomed?
In fact, fewer more people are buying cars:
> Electric car registrations accounted for more than 16% of the market in the first seven months of 2023, up from 14% this time last year. The rise saw the number of electric cars sold rise to 175,978 from 127,492 by the end of July (a rise of 38%), according to the latest official figures from the SMMT.
Sorry, but in what world do sales of electric cars going up and market share of electric vehicles increasing lead to the thesis that "fewer people are buying electric cars?"
Oh - I get it. It's the world where this publication wants clicks for ad revenue.
"Sure, electric vehicles are becoming more and more widely adopted, but wouldn't it be better for this article if they weren't?"
The actual title of the article is "What happened to EVs" and the page title is "Why America's electric car push isn't working". I don't know where the HN title is coming from, whether it's an update of the article's title because of precisely what you're advancing, or if it's heavy editing from the submitter.
Generally speaking the article exposes that the pace of adoption as stated by DoT didn't grow enough to meet their 2030 goal (i.e. The second derivative is going down), and goes on to explain why.
I think the article is fair, I think its title also is, I think the HN title is problematic unless you slap "than required to meet 2030 goals".
So "the fewer people are buying electric cars" canard is still living in a caption under the banner: "Fewer people are buying electric cars — the slowdown hints at a problem at the heart of America's EV push."
We’ve come full circle to Hearst and Pulitzer duking it out for the title of world’s richest liar.
Alfred Nobel at least felt guilty for introducing high explosives to warfare. The prize was his penance.
Everything I learn about Pulitzer says he’s a piece of shit, and I don’t know why anyone would want to win a prize named after either of those two oligarchs. But it does say something very on the nose about the epicycles in news reporting.
> Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.
and
> People in Norway own more cars than they have in the past, in part because EV incentives encourage people to buy more cars, and the government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving.
"The government has no plans to reduce how much people are driving"? Huh? Obviously, the narrative of this article is anti-car. That's the "broader transportation problems" that they're referring to in the first quote. They could care less if the cars are producing emissions or not, they're just trying to manifest an anti-car future.
Market-share is a cumulative metric, representing the sum of all purchases over several years. Sales is a flow metric, representing the sum of purchases in a given year. Market-share can increase, yet sales can be down in a given year.
I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall. In my gas car days, atleast once a month I was late for work or an event AND low on gas. Having to remember and think about getting gas was constantly on my mind because I have a pretty long commute.
With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank. No matter how late I'm running, I know there won't be a surprise that I need gas in addition to being late.
Yesterday close to where I live there was a big queue that still isn't resolved in a winter storm (over 1000 cars got stuck). With a gas car, you can physically go and get gas and fill it up manually but an EV would run out of battery, die and would need to be towed.
Maybe you live in a place where winter storms are not a reality but where I live the range isn't the problem it's the weather combined with the range. EVs range go down during winter and it's already worse, the risk of getting stuck in a snowstorm is thus higher.
But yes, during summer and perfect road conditions an EV would be great. That is not the reality of my life though and that is just speaking about the range issues. I live on the country side as well and I need a car that can handle roads that are not in perfect condition. EVs are also generally sedans and wouldn't even fit my family while being a lot more expensive, adding the risk of freezing to death in the car is just making it a no-go for now.
Presumably you would have started your day with a full charge, and be unlikely to run out even if stuck for a day. We switched to an EV last month and what surprised me the most was the mindset change required - you need to treat the car more like a phone that you keep topped off, instead of the gas car you tend to run down to near empty to maximize time between refills. The big hidden requirement is to have a powerful charging circuit at home, enough to charge the car overnight (60A/240V circuit for us). Without that the EV would be too cumbersome.
I've been charging off a standard 10A/240v for years and have yet to have a problem. If you plug in at dinner and leave in the morning, that's 200km range overnight added. If you don't drive 200km that day, it rolls over.
Where I live we have typhoons. The last big one caused gasoline supplies to be disrupted (I believe the tankers could not approach to dock or something like that) and all the gas stations were out of gas for two or three days. The electrical grid didn't even blip so there was no problem for EV owners.
ICE cars are really unsuited for places where the gasoline supply is not guaranteed perfect.
Eh, this event in Skåne is atypical. I live close by a mountain pass in Norway during winter, where people often have to camp for the night to get across, and even there it literally never happened that people would hike for gas. It's such a freak event that no one here cares about that in their choice of car.
Most people in the world don't have garages. Even if they have one on the house they live in, there may be more cars in the family than can fit in the garage.
There are a lot more cars parked in garages than there are EVs. EV adoption is far from saturated. By the time that is anywhere close to happening, I expect that charge station deployments will be significantly improved as well.
>There are a lot more cars parked in garages than there are EVs.
What exactly are you suggesting? That EVs can only supplement gas-powered vehicles? That people can use other people's garages for their own EVs?
> EV adoption is far from saturated.
Major car manufacturers are slowing down their EV production because the cars just aren't competitive. That's saturation. EVs are overpriced and dangerous due to fire hazards, and only realistic for rich people who have the time and money to play.
>By the time that is anywhere close to happening, I expect that charge station deployments will be significantly improved as well.
Speaking of charging, we would need a huge increase in electricity production to be able to support lots of EVs on the road. California recently saw this pain happen when EV drivers were asked to not charge their cars. Eventually, it may be mandated that your car be equipped with "smart" chargers that don't charge most of the time, to save the grid. The idea of mandating EV adoption is dead on arrival. Notwithstanding nefarious intentions, I guess the lawmakers are hoping for dramatic improvements in tech that almost certainly won't come.
I'm suggesting that even if non-garage owners never own EVs there are still a lot of potential EV owners.
I'm curious what data you've seen about the fire risk. What I've seen suggests EVs are safer.
Grid capacity problems, when they occur, are related to maximum load, not average. EV charging load is among the least time sensitive loads there are. In fact, there are programs running now that allow EV owners to sell power back to the grid during periods of high demand.
It's my perspective that for some drivers, like myself, EVs are more practical than ICE, not less. This isn't true for everyone.
I have an EV, but even I think the stats are misrepresented.
Gas cars catch fire pretty often. Yes. But usually they are older cars, and they often catch fire when running or soon after running hard. It is very rare to mildly drive through your neighborhood, park, and then a gas car catches fire.
EVs are catching fire less than gas cars.... That are old and being driven hard. While being new. And parked.
At that point anything can happen if we're including general forgetfulness or accidental acts. But in general gas drivers rarely completely forget to get gas, they simply delay getting it out of not wanting to experience the 5+ minute delay at that point in their day.
Which is understandable in a gas car. You either spend the 5 minutes today, or you spend it tomorrow morning. Same 5 minutes technically.
But to forget plugging in your car which takes 15 seconds, with the alternative being having to find a charger away from home, is something that I don't think will happen often since it's so easy to avoid such a bigger pain point.
Problem is more apparent when you live in a city and have no outlet at home (no garage or driveway).
But the anxiety is very minimal. People are exaggerating. Quick chargers are everywhere, and you just have to change your mindset just a little bit. (sometimes you might have to walk a few minutes from your public charge spot to your home)
I will gladly take that bit annoyance when this leads to better air quality in the city.
That depends massively on having home charging. If you live anywhere without it like an apartment complex, a high rise, with street parking only or a multiplex you'll have to count on charging at work.
In many European cities there are 7 or 22kW chargers on the street, used for overnight charging. Sometimes they're built in to lamp posts, more often they're independent.
That does make it somewhat possible but still depends on getting those limited spots. It's easier now while the cars are still relatively rare but it'll get worse unless chargers drastically outpace adoption of plug in vehicles. Right now if you're not a home owner charging at home is an iffy proposition for most people.
Back when I had feet, there were so many days where I had anxiety over forgetting to tie my shoes. Sometimes I would start the day with my shoes untied. Other days I'd obsess over which knot to use. And additional worries over my shoe becoming untied during the day.
I found out the solution to these problems wasn't about just remembering to tie my shoe tightly in the morning like an adult -- the real solution was to cut off my feet so I never needed shoes again!
With a gas car, you can take off on foot and walk to a gas station or call literally anyone to give you a bit of gas. EVs on the other hand have to be towed if they run out. Also, it is far easier to predict how far you can get on a tank of gas, and they are like a mile apart or less in any slightly populated place.
Point is, for day to day driving, you never have to worry about this because you start your day with full range.
So EVs get you the benefit of never having to worry about getting gas when late for something, and never having to get gas in general from your daily commute.
The tradeoff is, the few times you do want to go further than your range, it's a bit harder. But since those trips are usually on my leisure days, I personally don't mind that at all.
> With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank.
If you can, that's nice. But that assumes being able to not only charge at home but to have fast charging infrastructure installed at home.
We charge at home but the car doesn't fully charge overnight. That works all right since my partner only commutes every other day. On occasions where two consecutive commute days (or other special trips) come up, there's a lot of range anxiety involved.
> I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall.
This is difficult to understand. Sure, it's nice if you can start on full charge at home every morning. Nonetheless, some day you'll need to go farther and then a gas car is inevitably easier and faster to fill up.
Side note, if you eventually drive 200,000 miles, getting gas every 300 miles, and each getting gas only takes 5 minutes between detour and pumping... You send 55 hours of your life getting gas for that car.
> But an analysis from CarGurus found that EV prices were still 28% higher than gas-vehicle prices on average.
To me that is bonkers. When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles. That was the promise: forget about all the IC complicated gears, alternators, transmission, fuel pumps and imagine getting a motor and batteries, what could be simpler!". But no, we ended up with more expensive vehicles, which take longer to "fuel up", and more expensive to insure, and they have a shorter range. Then everyone wonders how come not as many people want to buy them.
Sure, for some, it's a moral choice. We are saving the planet so it makes sense to pay more and wait 30 minutes to charge or whatever instead of 3 minutes. That idea is valid but it will run out of steam. In the end, it it has to make sense economically. Even a Joe Schmoe who could care less about saving the planet should be able to price compare and say "Hey, look, $8k for new car with more torque and cheaper to maintain! I'll take it over a $18k Honda Civic". It has to be that simple to make sense financially.
This is entirely because manufacturers thought they saw a way to pad margins and then US politicians added tariffs to Chinese EVs to protect them from lower-cost competition.
As the other reply mentions, this isn't an issue in China.
And now that the bet on expensive EV growth allowing manufacturers to have fat margins forever isn't panning out, they're all freaking out about cheap Chinese models and pivoting to design cheap EVs.
You see this more in Europe than the US because Europe doesnt have the same protectionist tariffs the US does.
The Chinese EVs are very unsafe. Many many fires are happening with them, but you don't see it reported due to the journalistic repression there.
The sales numbers of Chinese EVs also look good because they'll buy hundreds of cars from their own stock and then park them in a field to rot, just to make the numbers look good.
IMO there shouldn't be a tariff on Chinese EVs but an outright ban.
> The Chinese EVs are very unsafe. Many many fires are happening with them, but you don't see it reported due to the journalistic repression there.
Wonder if it's just carelessness, or it's there is an inherent cost to make them safe. As in, did they just not bother because of laziness, or that extra safety to prevent fires takes up the 2x-3x price markup and there is simply no way around it.
The problem is that if they made a sub $10k vehicle now, "everyone" would buy it. That sounds great, but there's simply not enough battery factories to make the batteries for that many vehicles. The demand for expensive vehicles is still high enough that most of the EV battery factory output of the world can go to those expensive high margin vehicles, so of course the car makers haven't focused on low cost.
There are several dozen giga-scale battery factories coming online in the next few years. That should be a huge enabler to make cheap cars. Once they start to flood the market, the car makers will have to make budget vehicles to stay relevant.
There are also still a whole bunch of expensive R&D work still going on to optimize EV cars. Look at the cyber truck with its 48V and ethernet architecture. It made sense to launch that with an expensive vehicle so they can get a return on their R&D investment sooner. But now that they have it, they can apply it to a budget car and that should help lower cost by reducing the amount of copper wires needed.
Feels like everything is coming together for an explosion in EV growth. We're at the bottom of the ramp of the technology S-curve (logistics curve). We're in what feels a bit like a "false start" phase, but this phase is important for ironing out the kinks for the true mass-scale rollout.
I keep on seeing this problem reduced to the market or a business decision, but is it simply physically possible?
These vehicles require much more energy to produce. And without a reduction in consumption, almost the entire economy accounts for the availability of the same materials in the near future to meet carbon emissions targets. It's not just cars in vacuum.
It feels like we simply don't accept yet that the time of cheap energy is over...
I don't think ever before we had significant periods of time where we actually get paid to use energy from the grid due to overprovisioning with renewables. Plenty of times during the past several years I've had negative electricity cost.
Energy seems to be more and more available as we expand the infrastructure.
> I don't think ever before we had significant periods of time where we actually get paid to use energy from the grid due to overprovisioning with renewables
Yes, because storage isn't factored in and production is intermittent... A world relying fully on solar panels is also relying fully on batteries, whether it's lithium, hydro or something else, we need to account for that in the price.
> It's literally free after building the infrastructure.
That's a gross oversimplification of the problem at hand. The entire supply chain from mining to manufacturing to shipping relies on fossil fuel... The investments to renew all that will have to come from somewhere.
It is not "literally" free, it is free only if you ignore the global industrial complex required to build and service them.
Do you have a source? I think you may be referring to the peak production price without storage. Oil comes with storage: put it in a jug, and use it whenever.
That's about to change. Prices are coming down rapidly. The US is lagging the rest of the world mainly because its car industry is a bit uncompetitive (except for Tesla) and because manufacturers there are spoiled with a market that just has an insatiable demand for pointlessly large and expensive vehicles. That's still a growth market and very lucrative. Which means that US manufacturers are dedicating their very limited EV production capacity (except for Tesla) at that market exclusively. Because that's where the profits are.
BYD, Stellantis, and others are already producing cheap EVs by the millions. There are tiny EVs on the road in Europe that cost as little as 7000 Euros. Not a lot yet but I've seen a few in the wild. Think lots of plastic and not a whole lot of range and speed. Perfect for a city car. Stellantis is launching a proper EV for 24K euros this year; the Citroen e-c3. Modest range and good enough speed for short journeys on the highway. VW is following soon with the ID2. And of course the Chinese market has very different pricing than the rest of the world because it's a much more competitive market. BYD already has vehicles in the price classes you mention in China. You can buy EVs there for less than 10K$.
Producing cheap EVs is a solved problem from a technical point of view. It's being done. They exist. Just not in the US. Not yet at least. But as volume production kicks in that's just a matter of time.
Eh... as the Ford Maverick showed, people in the USA do want smaller and more efficient vehicles. Likewise, the Civic and Corolla have remained in the top vehicles for quite some time. People keep buying F150s because Mavericks became unobtainium really quickly, and the car space (as opposed to truck) has renewed competition from KIA and Hyundai which has dropped the overall sales figures for Japanese and American sedans.
Also, vehicles under a certain size and weight are illegal in many US states so anything similar to a kei car is outlawed. It is therefore unknown whether or not Americans would like even smaller and more efficient vehicles, but demand for some small-ish models seems to indicate that they would.
The last time I bought a personal vehicle (2022) I did some math. I drive X miles a year, I pay Y for gas, I pay Z for electricity. I then compared some vehicles in the segment that fits my needs and found the ICE options to have a significantly lower cost of ownership for the 8-10 years I expect to operate the vehicle. So I left the extra 15 grand in stock, which will see a much higher rate of return than an EV would have.
It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.
I bought an EV because it needs way less regular maintenance. I don't need to do oil changes or replace parts at an interval defined by the manufacturer. I don't even need to go to a gas station.
And every time I leave home, I've got a full tank, charged with cheap electricity.
And as a bonus it's really comfortable to drive, including having the ability to keep itself cool/warm even when the engine is not running.
IF I went purely by numbers the best choice would've been to buy a 2000€ car drive it until it breaks down. Then just call a taxi for the rest of the trip and buy a new similar one online for the next day. I could've bought 20 shitty cars for the price of my EV. But that's stress I don't want in my life.
Maintenance, planned and breakage, is a huge differentiator in favor of EVs- there are simply less moving parts and the EV ones are usually simpler and more reliable.
There is no question that the electric motor is the future.
The only question is that how do we transport the power for it, currently it's batteries but in the future it might be something else.
I'm personally wondering why more companies don't do range extender trucks for long hauls. Electric drivetrain with insane torque and long maintenance intervals. Add a small to medium sized battery. Plug in a diesel generator that can always work at 100% optimal RPM to produce maximum output to charge the battery.
(Edison Motors[0] is doing some amazing work in this space, but they're a small player)
Same, going on 5 years now, still only had to get my tires replaced. It’s been night and day compared to my last vehicle that always had something breaking for >$1,000 and I definitely don’t miss gas stations
I think we should be pricing in the time wasted on going to mechanics for routine and other maintenance. My last ICE would spend a couple of days a year in the shop (besides routine maintenance, there were some recall events, which then lead to engine malfunction which I learned were a known problem on this model, etc. etc.). And then each time you need a rental to substitute, which is a huge chore, and not to mention taking vacation days to handle it. Just got an EV last month and look forward to none of this.
The motivation behind choosing an EV is not because it's cheaper. People like the features, low pollution, low noise, the imagine, etc. Buying a car is very often not about making the best financial decision. E.g. in Europe, SUVs are now the most popular car model, even though they are more expensive, use more fuel, are more dangerous, noisy, polluting, etc.
Which I find crazy tbh (that they are so popular). Especially in Western Europe where vehicle taxes are crazy (imo). Here in the Netherlands, you could be paying €100/mo for a "midsize" SUV just in taxes. That's nothing to say about the cost of fuel, insurance, and maintenance.
I understand why they are priced that way, and perhaps it is my expat bubble in NL specifically, but with the cost of public transportation the way that it is, I'm not sure how they expect to keep raising vehicle taxes without also making public transportation more affordable.
You’re valuing your own time at $0/hr that is spent at gas stations, doing oil changes and other ICE maintenance, unless you have a personal assistant to do that stuff for you.
My calculation was 15 minutes/week for gas, 1 hour every 3 months for oil changes, and 1 hour a month on average dealing with other ICE problems (for instance I had a water pump failure cause my engine to overheat on a busy highway, had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck waiting in a dangerous location, then took another 2 hours to finally get home).
So that’s ~30 hours of my time per year. I value my own free time at $300/hr so even at a much higher initial cost an EV still made sense to me.
Where in the world does it take 15 minutes to fill up a tank of gas? You change your oil every 3 months? Are you driving 20,000+ miles per year? 1 hour per month on ICE problems? What are you driving, a 1985 Pontiac Skylark? My parents' 2003 Camry has never had a single mechanical problem.
Sometimes you just want something and that's OK...but your calculations are not based in reality.
The 2014 Ford Escape I had before my current EV was actually worse than his calculations. I'm glad your parents' Camry was reliable but my experience was not good.
1 hour per month is amortized. My last car ended up in the shop for several days. It's not several days of my time but dealing with renting a replacement and coordinating the drop-off took me half a day, and this happened more than once. I ended up burning a vacation day on it which was pretty frustrating.
If you read the article you posted, you’d see it say that the EV problems referenced have to do with paint, trim, climate, as opposed to engine, transmission, etc. In other words, not major issues.
“Tesla Motors, the market leader in EV sales, continues to have issues with body hardware, paint and trim, and climate system on its models, but are not as problematic for motor, charging, and battery. At number 14, Tesla is the second-highest ranked domestic automaker in CR’s brand rankings. The Model 3 and Model Y have average reliability while all the other Tesla models–the S, and X–are all below average.“
This has been my experience too. In 5 years I have not had any major issue with my electric car preventing me from driving it other than a flat tire. There have been a couple minor other issues, such as a window not automatically closing all the way and a software issue with the display but they were minor and tesla came to my house to fix it for free while the car was in my driveway. I don’t think there’s enough room in this comment box to type out all the major problems I had with my previous ICE vehicle in the 5 years before that.
I also have experienced much lower maintenance numbers with ICEs than what are being quoted. I think it's a combination of the models I pick (only those manufactured in Japan) and the fact that I buy new and drive for 8-10 years so I'm the single owner.
My 2019 Santa Fe has needed oil changes and 0 other maintenance in 5 years/50k miles.
I do the oil changes myself in about 30 minutes and they cost me about $30 using synthetic oil(costco) and OEM filter. So, I have spent $300 in 5 years on maintenance. Still original tires.
The people claiming expensive maintenance on ICE cars DID NOT follow what manufacturer recommends but the dealer, who have an incentive to offer extra services.
It's hard to decide based on any kind of published data because so much chance is involved. And it's hard to decide based on first-hand experience because you can't compare a new and 10-year old car. In my case I figured the unexpected maintenance is unlikely to be worse, and I know the expected maintenance will be better.
Well, either we believe the data, or we believe stories (true or not) that people tell us (EVs are more reliable). EVs compared to ICEs are still in the early adopter phase in terms of ironing the kinks out. We've been doing ICE vehicles for what, 100 years?
I don’t doubt the data, but the question is how to use it. When it comes to long tail events like breakdowns there is a big difference between an individual purchasing one car and a large fleet owner purchasing in bulk where the law of large numbers helps remove the variance.
In my anecdotal case, I traded a potentially larger but still small probability of a major breakdown for a guaranteed better maintenance schedule (no oil changes, less brake/rotor work) and no gas station visits. We’ll see how it goes!
It’s a few min out of my way each direction to get to a gas station, then another few min to fill it up, sometimes longer if I have to wait. For some reason you assume that the typical fill up is what happens every time, for an accurate average you have to consider worst case scenarios too. I’ve had too many experiences traveling late at night looking for a gas station in a rural area only to be driving 30+ min out of my way to find stations that were either out of gas or closed. I’ve also had plenty of instances where there was a long line at the station for whatever reason. So overall it roughly rounds to 15.
Yes I was told to change oil every 3 months, I drive a lot. I had a ton of mechanical problems with my Lexus RX.
It's always been true that people who drive a lot every day are the low hanging fruit for EVs. EVs are more efficient when in motion, but most cars spend a lot of their time parked.
But in most places prices have continually dropped so the people who will save has expanded.
(Not checked to see if recent battery sourcing changes are included but either way it's still illustrative if the big picture.)
I like to look at these types of calculators to make sure I am considering all the important parameters but I never use them to do the actual calculations. I have found too many that either don't consider all the parameters I want, aren't configurable enough, and some that are simply incorrectly implemented.
One example of this specific calculator is that it compares all vehicles in the same graph, and all vehicles use the same parameters. However, not every vehicle actually has the same parameters. For example, the resell value of different brands varies significantly. The maintenance cost of different brands varies significantly. I don't want to be too harsh on this because it does provide some value and seems to be implemented by a well meaning student. I just would never suggest someone use it to actual compare the cost of ownership of different vehicles.
EDIT: Another thing that's hard to model is road trips. During which time gas prices fluctuate and electricity prices shot up.
Because if you’re putting modest mileage on a vehicle you probably don’t need to worry much about maintenance beyond a once a year maybe scheduled visit to the dealer for a long time. That’s worth a lot to
Me.
the supply of used cars isn't what it used to be post-covid. Some people end up leasing a new car simply because their used car search was extremely slim pickings.
When in a conversation about keeping car expenses low, mentioning leasing seems like a bizarre thing to do.
My understanding is that a lease price is essentially the purchase price minus the expected value at the end of the lease (Plus a few dollars for profits). ie, A $50,000 car that's expected to be worth $30,000 after 3 years might have you pay $25,000 over the course of the 3 years, which would be about $695/mo.
But frequently, in reality, I would see such a car being leased for $750/month with $3,000 due at signing or some shit.
Every time I see lease offers, I do the math and they seem like an incredibly bad deal. Even if the lease expenses are a business tax deduction, I don't see how in the long term it ends up a better deal than buying new over the course of 10 years.
Didn't lease, but did buy new due to this factor. I was looking for a rather modest, cheap, reliable, used sedan. Prices were all well over $14/$15k (for a 2015-2017, and nearly the cost of new after that). At that point, it made sense to look at a new Kia/Hyundai in the lower price range and gain a decade's worth of warranty.
Yeah. In America it's pretty clear that they're using the high battery cost to say "all EVs are expensive so they start at 50k and only go up" so they can crank their profit margins.
Batteries are unavoidably expensive, but the only market they've been targeting are the wealthy, so they're largely burning through the enthusiasts and people on the border. Of course that market slows down, you've gotta open up the rest of the market to keep it accelerating. Maybe make something other than F-150-alikes.
The F150 is the best selling vehicle in the US. That’s not an anomaly, the top 3 are all trucks, and 5 of the top 10 are trucks. Making a great EV truck is an enormous market opportunity.
No one wants to chase the low end market in the US. Even if the tech pans out it just means more work faster resource depletion given the infra isn't there yet, and less profits. And then you think well a hybrid would fill the void better anyways if you have to sacrifice range for cheaper EVs.
> No one wants to chase the low end market in the US.
Geely, BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are chasing the affordable end of the global market, regardless of if US and EU manufacturers also do so or not.
Obviously they would prefer not; as it leaves the market wide open to them. Either they will also sell these affordable cars in the USA; or the USA will lose out.
But I expect Tesla and Hyundai/Kia will be there as well before too long.
Add a lifetime carbon tax to car purchases and EVs would make a lot more sense.
Even without that they will make sense soon. Expecting new tech to start out at the same place on the mass-production supply chain curve as the internal combustion engine is idealistic. It takes time to reach economies of scale but it will happen.
As the article says, the best approach to addressing climate change is not to replace cars with EVs 1:1, but to rethink invest in public infrastructure in high-population areas so that people don't feel like they have to buy a car.
This is a more thoughtful approach to addressing the problem than simply levying a tax on people who can't afford what still appears to be a rich man's toy.
The best way to address climate change would be to annihilate the human population. Since we're not going to do that (presumably), we have to come up with a practical, viable and acceptable solution.
Altering American culture to love public transportation is significantly less practical than offering them EVs. The only time I can think of that a campaign like that might have worked is with smoking and how many decades did that take (and how many people still smoke anyway)?
I think it’s more that the EV battery adds $10k to the cost of the car. So they add lots of cheap bells and whistles (ie touchscreens) to justify that additional price.
Part of that is making electricity cheaper, which means finding better alternatives to renewables, for the time being. Realistically only nuclear can get there until more breakthroughs happen in solar. Instead we're seeing electricity go up and this is only going to make people double down on gas cars, moving to a different state if needed.
Making a working tech cheaper is easier than trying to discover new tech that we don't even know will have enough output. Also, if they were that expensive then I would think they wouldn't get built at all, but there are a lot of nuclear plants, not to mention we can always continue investing in renewables and eventually phase them out.
The solution for 80% of the world is solar, wind, batteries; and batteries are the only thing that matters price-wise. We have acceptable battery technologies today, the thing that is missing is manufacturing at the scale needed. Closer to the poles nuclear and geothermal make sense to add, since solar isn't as reliable and doesn't produce as much. But cheap batteries make nuclear cheaper too. It is better to keep your multi-billion dollar facility outputting near 100% of its capacity all of the time, batteries let you smooth out the peaks and valleys of demand. So all paths with less natural gas and coal lead to more batteries, they are they thing that matter.
Right, and I would include battery tech as part of renewables in practice. I really hope the next generation of batteries (i.e. solid state, and/or no rare earth metals needed, and more density) is enough of a jump for the wider change to happen.
I mean year in magical utopia world we would have build them already and it would be great, but we’d also have had serious electric cars from American auto mfgs 30 years ago in that world.
instead in our real world the auto and oil companies literally sabotaged the tech and repossessed the early vehicles that owners loved.
America gave away it's manufacturing base to Japan in the 70s and Japan gave it to Korea and China, and China gave it to Vietnam.
There are more Chinese iPhones in American hands than in any other country. Some of them run a particularly nefarious Israeli Spyware that could get you killed if deployed on behalf of a particular kind of customer.
There's plenty of Black Mirror style dystopia right within US corporate policy that doesn't involve CCP panopticon fear mongering.
A US woman discovers that her Mercedes allows her abusive ex-husband to track the car movements and follow her. Eve though she got a court order giving her sole control of the car and was making the loan payments herself, the company refused to rescind access to her abusive ex because his name was still on the title.
As you say, part of the problem is also that the loan was in the husband's name.
> the loan and title were in his name, a decision the couple had made because he had a better credit score than hers.
Curious, what outcome would you expect instead? As in: no tracking functionality, or tracking that can be disabled by the driver, or customer support processing the request, or saner credit score processes, or something else?
I would expect Mercedes to abide by a court order. This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't a "smart car" and just has a plain old set of keys, the company wouldnt need to be involved at all. But they have an additional responsibility here because they can override the legal system in this case with no recourse.
Frankly they're lucky the ex husband killed himself. Could have been a very expensive lawsuit if he ended up hurting someone.
Batteries are too expensive for cheap cars. There won't be $1k beater EVs for a _long_ time. Just the raw metals in any decently sized battery is worth 2-3 times that. Even more if the battery cells are still in working condition, it can be repurposed for multiple uses.
Also expensive cars have bigger profit margins - which is the real reason =)
Raw material cost of a car is under 50 percent. An ICE drivetrain isn't really a huge part of that. Interiors, paint, suspension, electronics, HVAC are all still costs in an EV. So even if motors, batteries, motor controllers, cooling were all free, EV costs won't decimate ICE costs.
> When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles.
And you will see super cheap evs as soon as the market for those thinking they are saving the planet is exhausted. As with any product, it’s easier to exploit emotional buyers. And once tesla and others will want to tap into the practical buyer market prices will drop.
I've lived with an EV for 3 years now, and take some legit road trips from SF: Utah, Vegas, LA, San Diego, Tahoe. I have also been all over the world and done many, many trips (far to many to count). I submit the optimum mix for most Americans right now is roughly 1 EV and 1 hybrid, solar roofing and a battery storage system. The average American has a spouse. Even if we ignore kids, we can roughly assume, unless those suburbs are way more empty than they appear, that both people have a car. Let one have an EV, and one take a hybrid. That way, they can cover the occasional very long drive in relatively remote areas.
Keep in mind, it may very well eventually switch, where gas stations are less common than high power EV chargers in the remote areas. Sort of a Dutch disease issue: once the EV chargers are the dominant market, the gas station market is likely to quickly fade until it's just diesel and finally all electric.
The Mad Max theorists worry that they won't have power for their electric vehicles in the event of an apocalypse. Friends, how long do you think refineries, pipelines, and oil freighters are going to stay going in the event of an apocalypse? Better to get good at rigging some salvaged solar panels, an inverter, and re-learn the old pass times, like dominos, dice, and cards.
Snow and ice. Deep snow, deep ice. Layers of ice, then snow, then ice, created within a couple hours. I think even if it slides off, that could cause some damage.
1. Range. But this speaks to the failure of the industry to provide charging infrastructure. This was one big thing that Tesla got right.
2. Price. An EV is inherently simpler to build and should cost less. Indeed, early EV offerings were almost affordable, if not for the high cost of the batteries. Now that batteries are less expensive, the automakers are pushing large, expensive cars (because they think they can sell them?). The Nissan Leaf is going away. The Chevy bolt stumbled badly out of the gate on technical issues.
3. Somebody figured that if extravagant pickup trucks are the most popular cars in American, then what America wanted was an electric pickup. The "I want a pickup" idea does not tickle the same brain cells as the "I want an EV" idea.
Make affordable, entry-level EVs and sufficient infrastructure to make them usable by people with HOA restrictions or apartments, and they will sell like hotcakes.
> The "I want a pickup" idea does not tickle the same brain cells as the "I want an EV" idea.
Very anecdotal but I disagree. My dream vehicle might be a hybrid pickup that sacrifices the frunk for an ICE that can give me much greater range if needed, while still having a full size battery I can use for around town and camping.
Also, EV pickups are basically the perfect work truck for people using plug-in power tools. My neighbor is building a new house, and the workers have needed to borrow our power outlet multiple times.
I wish they would go with a 4 cylinder ICE. Probably could even go down to 3. I want an ICE that can just barely keep up when I'm running on flat ground with a trailer. When going uphill I want to drain the battery a bit (and then recharge downhill). I want to be able to drive for 11 hour towing a trailer, stopping to recharged and fill the gas tank (both at once please!) every 300 miles.
The ICE is a generator rather than connected to the wheels. The truck operates as an EV at all times and then fires the motor when at low state of charge. How it runs is really not important as long as it charges the battery enough to extend range indefinitely. The game is about peak efficiency.
"But an analysis from CarGurus found that EV prices were still 28% higher than gas-vehicle prices on average."
That's the problem. The product costs too much. Way too much.
Auto companies have tried to position electric cars as a premium product. The electric version usually comes with the highest trim level. In the truck sector, it's ridiculous.
Ford just raised the price of their base electric F-150 by $5000. "The new starting prices for the Ford F-150 Lightning will range from $54,995 for an entry-level Pro model to $92,995 for a Platinum Black trim." The base price for the 2024 gas version is $36,570.
Tesla's Cybertruck is only sold in the high-end models. Base model will be on sale in 2025, maybe.
Rivian is in the "Super luxury all-wheel-drive electric truck" category, according to Edmunds.
This despite steady decreases in battery prices.
If the US auto industry doesn't get its act together, BYD and Toyota will take over the low-end market.
> sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
"pace of adoption" = % YoY growth. As the market matures and grows, it will no longer be able to "double" or "triple" in a short amount of time. A market with a fixed cap cannot sustain indefinite exponential growth; it will be a logistic function at best. This is simply a mathematical certainty; anyone who expected otherwise is a complete idiot undeserving to report on markets.
It’s the same problem it’s always been from my point of view.
There’s nowhere to charge. No charger at my apartment, none at my office and according to internet charger maps it’s a 45 minute round trip to go get a charge and then I have to both save some of the range to get there and waste some getting back.
Doesn’t appear that anything will change on the next few years to gain a charger at my apartment or work either.
Also EVs all appear way more expensive than the used ICE cars that I would buy.
I don’t have the faintest desire for a luxurious car. I just want a super simple basic cheap car to get from point a to b.
A little over 20 min to get to a charger, then a little over 20 to get back home. Not to mention how long do I need to sit there and wait? And god forbid the couple charging ports aren't occupied when I get there...
Every few days, just to keep my car charged? Sounds like the biggest pain and waste of time ever to me.
I spent ~15K on my used car. What kind of range can I get in an EV for under 20K? My daily commute is ~60 miles (~30 miles each way), so how often would I need to make this 45 minute round trip just to charge my car?
RE: The only states in the US where that is the case are Wyoming and Montana
That is absolutely incorrect. In Oregon, from the town that I live in, it is at least 45 minutes to the next one, regardless of the type of car or the road traveled. Keeping at a legal speed limit it is really an hour or more to the nearest charger.
"EV should be able to do everything a gas car can"
I disagree with this article. I have a 2023 Polestar that I've had for about 10 months. I will be trading it when my new gasoline Audi arrives in the next week or so. I'll never have another electric vehicle. They tell you things that are not true. The cost of ownership of electric vehicles is much higher than gasoline, especially if you travel. It takes twice as long for a trip. A trip that used to take me normally 7 hours turned into 15 hours for charging and waiting.
You're going to be shocked by the electric bill. We're having to pay 0.22 cents/kW here. Many of the charging stations charge more than it costs to fill up a gas powered car. If you leave your car on their charger, they charge you for parking, and it is expensive. Don't charge your car, then go to dinner, and the movie.
They burn through tires. I have almost 30,000 miles on mine and I already need a new set of tires. I don't accelerate hard. I would be curious about others experiences. My friend still swears up and down about his Tesla, but he never goes anywhere. He has a 2018 Tesla w/ 40k miles. Maybe they're perfect for people that live in the city. If you have to drive, be warned.
This comment touches real problems, I was thinking about purchasing EV but was worried about things touched in that comment. It makes me thinking I should wait a bit longer.
Why don't electric cars use replaceable battery modules with a standard form factor? Advantages would include:
1) It allows the battery to be easily replaced as the car gets older.
2) With a suitable generic form factor, it would allow batteries to be upgraded as technology changes.
3) It would allow people to only populate enough battery slots for their daily needs. Communing to work: you only need to insert a few battery modules. Going on a road trip: you can buy/rent extra battery modules and populate every battery slot.
4) Matching battery capacity to the task at hand is also safer, as there is less energy in the system in case of an accident.
The manufacturers may be using batteries as built in obsolescence or differentiation, but surely there is enough competition for someone to break ranks and build a car with some modularity. It could stimulate sales by giving people confidence in the battery, the weakest part of an electric car. Maybe Framework should start building cars as well as laptops?
Some manufacturers actually do this. NIO particularly does this at scale in China and I believe they are starting to expand to the US and the EU now as well.
But the reason that this is not a thing are that most of your assumptions as to why that would be a good idea are probably wrong.
1) Batteries outlive the vehicle. Not always but on average they do. There are plenty of first generation EVs that are more than ten years old now that still work fine with their original battery. And the batteries in the newer ones are far better than those first generation ones.
2) Replacing the battery is actually not that big of a deal technically if it needs to be done. It's a bit costly but otherwise just a routine maintenance operation that can be done in a day or so. There are of course lots of older EVs with lots of miles that have had a battery replacement at some point to get a second life.
3) most people are a bit irrational about how much battery they want vs. what they actually need. The reality is that most people end up being perfectly happy with a modestly sized battery. Charging infrastructure is rapidly improving and mostly you only need it when you go on longer journeys. My father has had an EV for one and a half year. With the exception of their summer vacation a few months ago, they never use any chargers other than the one at home.
4) Battery safety is just fine. Yes there is the occasional battery fire. But it's far less common that ICE vehicle fires. There are a few hundred thousand ICE vehicle fires in the US every year. And unlike with battery fires, fatalities are very common. Hundreds per year. Unlike batteries, petrol burns fast, hot, and explosively when it burns. Modern batteries are a lot safer than the first generation ones. Manufactures test that by crashing vehicles, shooting at the battery, puncturing them with nails, etc.
Isn't there something wrong to you if a "routine maintenance" takes a day?
The whole thing makes me think of home renovation, apparently the majority of landfill is cast-off material because re-use isn't a consideration.
I don't think "most people" arguments are great. People want freedom and flexibility, they don't want to have to sell their car and buy a new one if their conditions change.
I hope the first mainstream car in my market that takes a very modular approach wins out. In fact imo there should be regulated form factors, since the impact of these things at scale is huge, and I doubt battery recycling is that efficient.
Recovery is just one factor, there is often a lot of overhead in use of chemicals, labour, etc. The more they are designed for this process, the more sense it makes, that goes along with modularity.
Because batteries last hella long and it's not a particular concern. Nobody's going to be ad-hoc adding or removing batteries in the floor of the vehicle when a longer trip comes up.
Besides, the technology is seeing rapid iteration of cooling systems and integration with the rest of the vehicle (like structural battery packs). This is not the time for such standards.
I am not sure there are many people who want to swap out batteries when they weigh over 1000 pounds. Inserting a battery would require something to help carry and insert it which makes it have enormous user friction which makes it a non starter for most people. Not many people even want to swap out phone batteries despite those batteries being easy to carry.
Not the entire battery. Something in between an individual cell and an entire battery. Small enough to provide practical manual handling and some granularity in total capacity. Big enough that a reasonable number of them add up to a full battery.
Maintenance would be similar to cars today, in that those who change their own oil might be inclined handle their own batteries, whilst those who get a mechanic to change oil might get a mechanic to manage their batteries.
If batteries are cheap enough and long lived enough it's not an issue, but right now battery cost and longevity is a limiting factor. Not everybody replaces their car after a few years. The average car age is over 10 years [1], so there are plenty of cars out there much older than 10 years.
Maybe that's what is behind the sales growth slowdown? Those who replace their cars regularly (fleets) and don't care about battery longevity, are buying. Those who keep their cars for longer are hesitating, limiting the market.
Edit:
It seems like EVs already use a cell/module/pack hierarchy [2]. There's hope yet, if a particular module type emerges as a defacto standard.
You are probably thinking about the whole battery. But if you consider that it can be split into multiple modules, the weight of a module will not be that big.
Benefits of such design will be:
* lower operating weight since you wont need many modules for short trips
* lower registration weight of a vehicle
* the tires and road won't be damaged as much
* one can swap modules at gas stations instead of charging and waiting
* and the modules can be used as part of a house battery
In fact there is an european startup for microcars https://www.helixx.tech/ where they explore similar idea.
People also don't want to swap their own engines or transmissions, but shops will gladly do it for you. I don't think that the need for specialized equipment is a good counter-argument - plenty of car repair tasks require specialized tools.
I'm not thinking that battery replacement would be seen as a way of recharging or be done on the road. It would be infrequently done, when a change in capacity/technology is required or the module is worn out.
The interface specification could go beyond the electrical, including things such as heat removal.
They probably use stanard cells. However modules don't make sense as they need to pack cells where they fit and that goal sit in conflict with a standard module.
Because it wouldn't save a meaningful amount of money over the life of the car, but it would make developing and manufacturing them significantly more expensive.
A lot of the car model launches have been “paper” launches. They advertise a $30-40k car/truck and then anything other than the $70k premium model is “coming 2024”.
I would expect all car sales to be lower now that interest rates are considerable. I got mine at 1% interest and many got 0% not too long ago
> Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea persists even though in 2023 the average US driver traveled only about 40 miles a day, and in 2022 about 93% of US trips were less than 30 miles. Still, in a survey conducted by Ipsos last fall, 73% of respondents indicated they had concerns about EV range.
It's entirely true that an EV will work perfectly fine for 90%+ of the drives a typical person in the US makes. Logically, the right solution is to buy an EV for commutes and errands, and rent a gas engine car for road trips.
But the result of that logic is asking people to make one of the most expensive purchases of their life where:
1. They will only use it do things they don't enjoy: driving to work and running errands.
2. They won't get to use it for the things they do enjoy about that product category: road trips, camping, vacations, etc.
Logical or not, it's a psychologically shitty deal. Especially when you compare it to gas vehicles where you can use the same vehicle for both the fun and unfun stuff (at some loss of efficiency and environmental value). So at least when you're stuck in traffic on your horrific work commute, you're in a vehicle that pleasantly reminds you of your awesome camping trip last week.
This is where plug-in hybrids rule. Battery for short trips, ICE for road trips.
I have a Prius Prime, and the charge is enough for driving around town. If it had a 50% larger battery, it could have gotten us to work on one charge. But we don't commute since the pandemic.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.
The link they give to "no longer on track" is to a British site talking about British government targets, and nowhere does it suggest that they previously were on target but now aren't. That's almost an LLM hallucination level of bullshit.
> Plus, heavier electric vehicles are harder on roads.
It’s true but the author should check the fourth power law. Most of the road wear comes from the heavyweight vehicles, the trucks. The little weight increase on personal vehicles isn’t that bad for the roads.
Making lightweight electric cars is also possible, the old bmw i3 was light, but it’s more expensive.
One aspect that isn't discussed much is that the heavier vehicles do put appreciably greater wear on tires. Since as much as 70% of microplastics in the environment are from tire wear any increase may have a pretty alarming impact on the environment. There is no car based solution for the environment.
This article makes me even more dismayed at the fact that the Chevy Volt never really took off. I really believe it would be the perfect car for most people:
1. As the article points out, most people drive less than 40 miles a day, and the Volt provided 40-50 miles of electric range.
2. Since the battery is relatively small for an EV, no expensive home charging system is needed - just plug it into a normal 120V outlet and it fully charged overnight.
3. Since it automatically switches to gas power when the battery discharges, there are basically none of the downsides of EVs. No range/charger anxiety, for occasional long trips I just use gas, and it's actually able to utilize a lot more of the battery because it doesn't need a "buffer" (i.e. for a fully electric car most folks are very wary to bring it below 20 miles of range or so). With my Volt a tank of gas would last me about 6 months unless I went on a road trip.
I wonder if, as pure EV sales slow down, that people and car manufacturers will start to see the benefits of plugin hybrids. I think if a plugin hybrid had better styling (as opposed to the Prius-derivative styling of most of them) that they would do a lot better.
I agree, but noting one downside to the Volt and other plug-in hybrids: the complexity.
There's a lot that can go wrong when a car is in any kind of collision. EV have 'scary' high voltage cables that many repair shops don't want to deal with, but they make up for it with simplicity. Plug-in hybrids have almost all the complexity of both, combined.
My Volt ate some road debris, and it punctured an oil intercooler and two of the three glycol water loops, partly because the radiators sit quite low in a very full engine bay. I suspect many EVs would have been simpler to repair.
The complexity also just makes the product harder for potential customers to understand.
Now, I still like the car, and it has paid for the price premium in saved gasoline. Plug-in hybrids are a great middle ground between ICE and EV. I just wish the concept had sold better.
The low production volume of the Volt meant that the 1st generation Volts suffered from a poorly designed regulator on all windows, so the power window stops working. Those need to get replaced 5-8 years in. The battery coolant sensor is also poorly designed and if you ever get the dreaded SHVCS message, will prevent the Volt battery from charging. The dealer then rips you off asking for $2000 for what should be a 15min repair. /rant
Aside from these small things, I've loved the Volt and the 40mi is perfect for the average commute. Wish GM invested more in Volts instead of Bolts, which are way less aesthetically pleasing.
A coworker of mine has been commuting ~3 days a week (35km one ways distance) in his EV that has about 230km usable range.
Sure a shorter range would technically suffice but it's nice to not have to charge each day (since he can't do that at home and uses a public charge points near his gym).
That comes down to roughly charging 1-2 times a week which is no hassle at all and doesn't require a secondary drive train with all it's complexity and maintenance cost.
Hybrid sales are way down here in Germany (relative to EV and the whole market) and they won't come back I think.
EVs have so far captured the market for early adopters. The range limitations, early teething problems, and just lack of comfort of understanding how they work (is it on, is it not on, how far can I go, etc etc) only appeals to the early adopters.
My proof point in this is when I was renting an EV at Hertz a few weeks ago. The couple next to me were trying out an EV for the first time, and trying to select one. They couldn't figure out how to get the trunk open, there was no obvious button or handle (this EV only had a button on the key, which they hadn't taken from the car yet).
They were asking me a few questions as I just walked up to my car and started getting my stuff in it. They wanted to know which one they should take, how do they know if it's locked, etc. Many things which are not significantly, or any different from a regular car, but they understand that EVs are new, and they obviously weren't comfortable with the new.
So a "slowdown in growth", is somewhat to be expected as EVs make the transition across the chasm.
I'm embarrassed that i don't know this, I've read the book, but how is this properly addressed?
Im grateful that the Norwegian gouverment sponsored me a top specced Porsche Taycan Turbo for half the price. Now I drive more than ever, because now driving is really fun.
I will repay the Norwegian gouverment by announcing my move to Sweden. I cannot let my kids grow up in a country that spend tax money like a drunk sailor.
“AUSTIN, Texas, January 2, 2024 – In the fourth quarter, we produced approximately 495,000 vehicles and delivered over 484,000 vehicles. In 2023, vehicle deliveries grew 38% YoY to 1.81 million while production grew 35% YoY to 1.85 million.”
— Tesla Vehicle Production & Deliveries and Date for Financial Results & Webcast for Fourth Quarter 2023
Few people are buying non-Tesla EVs but more EVs sold last quarter than ever.
EVs are expensive and not that much better than a hybrid at the same price point. going full electric on cars isn't even that good of a plan. where's all of that lithium supposed to come from? it would be dramatically more cost effective to invest heavily into grid-tied public transit in urban areas, including suburbs which need to be re-zoned to mix-use so local transit can be more useful, and heavily subsidize switching to hybrid flex fuel vehicles in rural areas.
the black and white thinking in this domain is really frustrating.
Hmm...dealerships who make most of their money on service don't like to sell EVs, maybe? Surprise? Have had a Mach E for going on 3Y with 20K miles on it and it's literally needed cabin air filters and windshield washer fluid in that time. No there aren't any buyers being steered away from EVs by dealerships, noticing this...
Oh, and the oil companies selling gasoline have nothing at all to do with the "OMG such DOOM IF EVERYONE PLUGS IN THEIR EV" articles, eh? Let me translate that for you: "OMG such DOOM IF EVERYONE SWITCHES TO AN ENERGY SOURCE FOR DRIVING THAT'S REGULATED". When I charge at home in one of the most expensive states for electricity in the US, I'm still paying half the per-mile electric cost as the Subaru we also have. Oops. Thermodynamics are real, eh?
And let's not mention that it costs a lot of money to buy an ICE car that has anything like the acceleration and torque of a typical EV. I've had relatives (usually of the Fox News watching variety) grump about my car. You know what, it has just enough "mid-life-crisis" fun factor for me -- and that's why I got the damn thing. Because EVs are FUN TO DRIVE, PEOPLE.
So nya nya nya to all you trying to seem reasonable in the HN comments...
I've owned several EVs over the past 10 years, and I've settled on a so-called "hybrid garage." That is, one EV and one PHEV. I've owned two luxury EV brands priced over $80k, and yet my favorite EV is still my first one, a 2013 LEAF now worth less than $5k.
The cheap and tiny EV is a no-fuss/no-worry car that zips me around town for my daily driving. It's small and nimble, and I don't really care about what happens to it. I park in spaces a lot of other people would pass up because they're too cramped and they're worried about door dings or whatever. By now it has about 50 miles of range, but I never get close to that on any given day. In fact I tend to go several days in a row between plugging it in.
The other car is a PHEV that only has about 20 miles of range. It dips into the gas tank here and there, but that's so infrequent that stops at the gas station happen only maybe once every month and a half. And when it's time to do a family vacation or other out-of-town trip, it's only using gas, which is super-easy to come by and only requires 5 minutes to replenish. Best of all I don't have to deal with any rapid charger drama.
My next car is going to be a midlife crisis purchase, and I'm taking a pretty hard look at a manual transmission ICE. The idea of buying something like a Taycan and then having to roll the dice with the substandard rapid charging infrastructure doesn't sound appealing to me at all.
I know Tesla superchargers are a thing and that they will be available more broadly in the years to come, but I'm also looking to reduce the tech in my car, in particular anything that reports my location all the time to some mother ship.
You sound like a version of me with deeper pockets. We have a Volkswagen eUp! as an EV, which is a lot of fun to drive and does all the inner city commute. Then I have a station wagon that I bought for 15000€ in almost new condition, which is used for all longer trips or cases when stuff needs to be transported. Sometimes I drive it on short trips only to not let it sit around for longer than two weeks. I would go for a PHEV, but currently I have other financial priorities.
> My next car is going to be a midlife crisis purchase, and I'm taking a pretty hard look at a manual transmission ICE.
That sounds like a Porsche 911 Carrera T, at least that would be my midlife crisis choice if I had the money.
Going completely off-topic here but I have to ask: why spend that much for a Carrera T in a world the Cayman GTS 4.0 exists and is superior in virtually everything that matters for a sports car for significantly less?
Manual transmission and purism. I am not in the financial position to buy a Porsche, but if I was I would not go for the best power to price ratio, but for the car that gives me most joy.
I had to double check in case they removed it for MY 2024 but they didn't: the GTS comes stock with a manual, the PDK is an option that costs over 3k€.
Regarding the joy, I get it but that's why I asked: the GTS comes with the 4.0 NA engine and incredible balance (though I haven't driven a 992 so I can't speak from experience there).
We bought a new primary car last April, it was a toss up between an electric and a petrol/diesel, and we opted for a diesel car in the end.
Reasons: range anxiety, and war anxiety.
I want a Tesla, but the problem is that an electric car becomes a giant paperweight in an emergency.
We have a secondary, small electric car and we use it for short local trips. There’s been more than a few instances where a lapse resulted in not being able to use it because it wasn’t charged fully. And don’t get me started on the state of public charges, it’s a mess.
Don’t get me wrong, I like electric, but edge cases are real and important and so they must be planned for.
Methinks you assume too much. Rooftop solar is only really an option for someone that owns a SFH, or is in a townhome with a fairly permissive HOA (In the US).
Someone living in an apartment probably has no ability to access reliable solar except via the primary grid (which we assume will be down in case of emergency.) And in other places, like California, having solar panels is growing increasingly expensive due to the additional fees imposed by the electric utilities (and nevermind the initial costs.)
Gas is relatively easy to stockpile in large volumes, it has a huge energy density, and is highly useful for other things, not to mention being fairly portable. You can even use it for producing electricity by using a generator.
If that is the case, chances are you are in not a good position for any emergency. For ‘emergencies’ you want to be outside the city, with a big stockpile of food and clean water. Maybe enough land to grow some veggies. Extra points for solar and a battery. A gas powered car won’t save you in any real emergency. Do you stock 100liters of gasoline in your home?
> A gas powered car won’t save you in any real emergency.
And unless you happen to live somewhere with reliable off-grid electric generation, neither will your EV. What are you going to use your EV for if you live on the 4th floor of an apartment building that's a 1500' walk from the closest parking spot? Run a giant extension cord up to the balcony?
> Do you stock 100liters of gasoline in your home?
I keep a jerrycan or two of gas in the outdoor storage space that I refill every half year or so. Sure, that's not 100L, more like 40, but it's not nothing. I could easily expand my storage capacity to 200L or so without much problem if I decided I needed to. And like I said, gas has many uses, including as a currency in more extreme circumstances.
No, in an emergency, we all run out to the gas station to fill the containers that we just bought. Then we find out they are out, because that is what happens in an emergency.
> Huh? What emergency? You will always have solar on your roof. I think in emergencies, gas will run out much quicker than electricity?
You're assuming having solar on your roof (most people still don't) but more importantly, assuming an emergency where you get to stay home.
For example when we had to evacuate due to California wildfires a few years ago, we left the EV behind. Doesn't have enough range to be a good evacuation car and who knows how busy charging stations were going to be with everyone doing the same.
We have gas cars too so no big deal. But having only an EV in such an emergency would be scary.
In 2023, Australian full battery electric vehicles made up 7.2 per cent of all new vehicles sold, compared with 3.1 per cent in 2022. That is despite a decade of EV denial by one particular side of Australia government, meaning EV re-charging infrastructure in Australia is still decades behind the rest of the developed world.
Because investing in infrastructure (of many types) often carries with it capital expenses and have low returns that are unbearable for most potential market players but once in place allow the provisioning of services who are very useful to the population.
In this case, nobody was going to build EV chargers if there were no EVs on the road and nobody would buy an EV if there were no chargers on the road. Stepping in and giving the initial incentive to break that cycle is what this type of intervention, such as subsidies, does.
And why do Australians think governments should build power distribution systems? Why can't we leave that up to private enterprise?
And why do Australians think governments should fund the building and upkeep of federal highways? Why can't we leave that up to private enterprise?
Surely the best option is to make sure every public road is a toll road. That Liberal Party approach to road building has worked great in NSW.
Toll Holdings is now one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to a Liberal NSW government turning every major NSW 'public' road into a Toll Holding toll road.
That's how good government works, making sure the public pay tooth and nail for a 'public' road as that helps out the donors and the shareholders.
The electric offerings from most companies just don’t seem “there” yet. I don’t want a Tesla because AirPlay and adjustable aircon grates are non-negotiable for me, but the alternatives just don’t seem like a good bet yet. Hyundai is compelling, but most brands are offering electrified versions of non-EV platforms. An EV platform with low drag is much better, but outside of Tesla and Hyundai no one seems to be shipping an EV platform car in the $40k price range.
Then when it comes to plug in hybrids, Toyota RAV4 Prime looks great, but options from other makes look kinda like a joke with 20-30mi range and the ICE engine kicks in whenever you accelerate, or are similarly super expensive to the BEVs.
My plan is to just buy an ICE car now, and then sell it in a couple years once brands start fielding their second generation electric platforms with better economics, NACS (Tesla) plugs, and the infra catches up a bit.
> I don’t want a Tesla because AirPlay and adjustable aircon grates are non-negotiable for me, but the alternatives just don’t seem like a good bet yet.
Teslas have adjustable aircon vents, but only through the touch screen (at least on newer models). You can definitely aim/split them.
Yeah I know but like… it’s so bad. It’s the only car I’ve ever driven where it feels unsafe to point the aircon at my hands. Completely unnecessary and probably expensive digital mis-feature.
You mean CarPlay? I worried about that before getting a model y, and it was really unfounded. If anything Tesla’s is better (at worst equal). I love not plugging in my phone every time (no maps on Bluetooth with CarPlay). Maybe turo a Tesla for a few days before making up your mind
I drive my parents’ Model S and Model Y whenever I visit them. I’m very familiar with the cars. I love everything about the drive, can’t stand the UX.
> I love not plugging in my phone every time (no maps on Bluetooth with CarPlay)
So far, I test drove an Toyota RAV4 Prime 2023, a Audi Q3 2020, and a Mercedes GLC 300 2024, all have wireless CarPlay that starts with 1 tap after I sit down in the car. The Toyota and Mercedes have an inductive charging spot for the phone.
I should check it out - thanks for the pointer. I don’t like the body on the Ioniq 5, so I’m interested in an option with a different body, although I’d prefer real leather seats.
It's great that we're getting more competition, but since it's more expensive R&D it's all geared for top of market. I had looked at a plugin hybrid but the actual range of the electric engine was underwhelming.
I'm also curious how the EV situation will play out in Canada, it gets damn cold here. How much does that reduce the advertised range on top of running a heater?
How do you provide better transport to a village with 30 houses in and services in 4 different directions?
There is literally demand for no more than 30 journeys a day in each direction. An hourly bus service would have more drivers than passengers even if it captured 100% of passenger journeys.
Why are you cherry picking edge cases for a global issue?
Most people in the US are driving from their suburbs downtown or from two close cities.
As an European I lived 6 months in Columbus, Ohio, and it was crazy to me that a trip from suburbs 10 miles off downtown could take you multiple hours.
Dayton to Columbus is connected only through bus, and it's a 2 hours trip!
Should be a 25 minutes train.
In Europe public transport isn't perfect, but it's way better than in US.
I live in a small village not far off Rome.
Going to city center is a 1 hour drive, way more during peak time, but in train it takes you 20 minutes, and guess what, most people take the train. It's comfortable, quick, cheap.
This also means that many people in my village do not need multiple cars per household, me and my SO have just one and it sits in the garage most of the time.
Hell, I remember being in LA and it was impossible to walk 1 mile distance. You had to call Uber for such things. Crazy.
I think this is a US only problem. People in the US probably take longer road trips than the rest of the world. When I take a Roadtrip, I need a 20 minute break every two hours anyway, and as far as I have seen that is enough for a charge for the next two hours. It's not perfect but I don't think it's as bad as the people in this thread are making it out be. I'm in Europe btw.
Agree, the american perspective is hard to understand for me as a european.
On the other hand, people with extreme needs, I think, more often write online. It is normal even in my european country seeing a bunch of comments just not agreeing with what a majority if people think.
I have very modest car needs at all, and I seldom write that almost any EV would satisy my range needs. For me its an economic problem instead, just not worth it when driving seldom.
Driving from San José California to Los Angeles with 20 or 30 minute recharging stops every two hours works great for me. I get to walk around, stretch, maybe do some shopping if the charging station is at a shopping center. Yes, it adds time to the trip, but (at least for me) it’s a lot less stressful.
I live in the US, the number of folks who told me “can’t buy an EV, I drive for 5 hours straight” is pretty high, it’s fairly crazy. Especially when you think of how much not stopping increases your accident risk.
Why is this blatantly incorrect title allowed here? The correct title is, "more people than ever are buying EVs but the pace of the growth has significantly slowed".
The article itself confirms this as the truth and the original title as a flat out falsehood.
Off the shelf kits exist. There are also people who specialize in installing them. I think these kits don't take off because the people who are car nuts do some research about what type of performance can be expected from a conversion, and they conclude it would make the car worse overall. Worse performance, worse resale value.
Classic cars are only possible to collect at all because of a lower level of proprietary crap than new cars. If you convert a perfectly working classic car, you're throwing away whatever engineering goodness is inside it to install some inferior bespoke and likely proprietary system. You will probably have to cause permanent damage to the original frame and body of the car. What you end up with is a weird combination that could malfunction in some circumstances, and has inferior range and resale value.
I was thinking more along the lines of a simple/reversible modification like existing propane conversions. I know there are people doing body off Tesla conversions and the like.
I envision batteries + motor/bio fuel cell in the trunk or something. I believe Mazda is looking into electric motors inside of wheels/hubs and Honda was exploring hydrogen in push rod engines.
I come from a hot rod family, so I understand your point on classics. Perfect example is a T-bucket vs a Model T.
I see what you mean. Propane conversions are way less intrusive than EV conversions. Propane is not very heavy or bulky, and you can use the same engine in many cases. I'm no expert on it but that's what I've gathered.
I think hydrogen and other chemical power sources have the best potential to replace fossil fuels. I think Toyota is betting big on hydrogen, and they know a thing or two about EVs. Researchers are looking at synthetic hydrocarbons now too. Eventually, that may become the best option.
Article does not support the title, and I assume the source title has been changed since it no longer matches the HN title.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.
Yep. The Chevy Bolt (not EUV version) was the absolute perfect size in EVs - nice compact hatchback, plenty of storage room, still a standard 5-seat layout (albeit the seats were... not the most comfortable ever), could park it absolutely anywhere even in Seattle, excellent.
I sold that car in 2020. Fast forward about 4 years and the EV market is all just soulless massive tanks needing Oversized Load flagging trucks to go through narrow tunnels /halfjoke
+1 on the Bolt EV. I've been riding passenger in one pretty often lately, and it seems pretty damn good for a GM econobox EV. Not overboard in the crazy vaporware/unfinished tech garbage like a Tesla, and the 200hp/3500lbs is totally adequate. Could use a bit more range, but it's enough for most peeps IMO.
I've always been a fun and sporty 2-door coupe kind of person. I'm not aware of any EVs that fit that description and don't cost several arms and legs for some damn reason.
Weight (and the battery capacity to deal with it) is a major factor in EVs; we should be seeing things like Ford Focus wagon EV, Honda Fit EV, Toyota Corolla EV.
But everything we have now was planned assuming zero interest rates forever and that consumers will always demand more technology regardless of what it does.
Have y'all seen the photos of the new version of Apple Car Play in a Porsche? It's like nobody ever stopped and said "wait, is this a car that people are going to drive? Or a really uncomfortable workstation?"
The Nissan Leaf is a nice size for an around town EV. I currently have a twenty year old truck that I need for a side hustle, along with normal household and yard work, but I really hate using it for all those short trips to the grocery store, the library, and anything else nearby that doesn't involve moving around a large, heavy, or messy objects.
The economics of having a Leaf as a second vehicle just doesn't work very well, especially since my primary job is a remote work from home one which requires no daily commute. Used Leafs, even with batteries in terrible shape that will need an expensive replacement, are priced too high and the days of being able to add additional vehicles to an insurance policy for little cost appear to be gone. From an environmental point of view, using the truck for short trips probably is net better than having an entirely different vehicle, even if it's an EV, but it always feels wrong.
We've got a 2005 CR-V and a 2015 Nissan LEAF for our 4 person family and it's pretty ideal. There are enough days where we both need a car (often because kid #1 is doing X at Y and kid #2 is doing M at N and we need both cars to get both Y and N).
The LEAF gets the bulk of the random nearby errands and still has ~70 miles of range (62-65 in winter). Our total insurance is $1220/yr for two cars, two drivers, and substantially higher than standard coverage limits. In 9 years and 25K miles, the LEAF has needed wipers twice, washer fluid, one tire plug, and is about to need 2 tires. That's ideal for the guy who turns all the wrenches on the family car. (The Honda is low maintenance, but the LEAF is nearly zero.)
Article is spot on about the problems, but as much as I'm a huge fan of European style mass transit, we really need to let go of the idea of "push more public transportation" as some sort of solution in the U.S. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. The US as a country has for the past 100 years been built around cars, both in cities and rural areas, and it would probably take another 100 years to change that if there was even the willpower to do so (which there is not). So whatever solutions we implement need to just accept that fact; it's fanciful and counter-productive otherwise.
It could happen, it would just require such a massive shift in current attitudes and regulation that it's not very likely.
> So whatever solutions we implement need to just accept that fact; it's fanciful and counter-productive otherwise.
Discussion is almost never counter-productive. I would highly advise against trying to reduce the amount of discussion (in general and on this issue.)
It's not a fact that it won't happen because it is technically possible, and there is a large portion of people pushing for it, and it's expanding in cities like Miami (where I live), Florida in general, Texas, etc.
Ironically, with enough discussion anything is possible, including a massive shift to public transport in the U.S.
These things don't have to be one or the other. There are places where it's very important that we transition towards less car-focused infrastructure and there are others where we will invest more in that infrastructure. Contrary to many contrarian beliefs, European style mass transit doesn't include the complete removal of cars.
European cities were always high-density as they've been around much longer than US ones many of which developed for the most part after the arrival of the car.
But the problem in the US is the geographical distances are enormous compared to European countries, and the lack of a dense train network.
I know it's a motorcycle and a non-plug-in hybrid, but I think Kawasaki's offering of a 450cc ICE with a "strong" EV hybrid hits the sweet spot for me. You get 1000cc performance with the EV assist off the line, and 250cc gas mileage when just cruising.[1]
The longer wheelbase is going to make it less of a bike for the twisties than the dragstrip, but you can't have it all!
One thing I have not heard discussed is the all-too-common family visit. If I drive 200 miles to visit some family and stay at their house what’s the etiquette for using their power to charge my car? I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking and saying “I’ve got to leave for two hours to find a charging station” also feels awkward. I want to maximize our time together and not burden folks with needing to pay to charge my car.
Then pay them. It's not hard to figure how much energy you consumed and what the cost of electricity is, make a conservative estimate, round it up and give them the money.
My biggest beef with EV buyers is their obsession with range, and their complete and utter disregard for efficiency. Why do we obsess over fuel economy for our ICE cars but have zero awareness of what the equivalent figures are for the various EVs.
Imagine 2 seemingly environmentally conscious buyers debating between a Corolla and a Hummer:
"How far can the Corolla go on a tank? 325mi. OK, well how far can the Hummer go? Well it's got the extended safari tank, so it can go 500mi. Got it, so obviously I'm going to get the Hummer."
No ICE buyers who have any concern for the environment would ever compare two ICE cars using only the total range figure, and completely disregard the MPG. In fact it's the complete opposite. Most would consider the Hummer absurd solely due to its atrocious fuel economy.
Similarly, these same people will say things like:
"Be sure to turn off the lights when you leave a room"
"I changed out my LEDs because they're so much more efficient than those old incandescents"
So why are they so obsessed with saving electricity in that context, but never even begin to think about the equivalent value for, say, a Tesla Y vs. a Rivian? In fact a Rivian has the same "green cred" to most buyers as does a Model 3. Yet the same person would chastise someone for running incandescent bulbs or for leaving the lights on when you leave the house.
I'm certain that the difference in electrical energy usage between a month of driving a Rivian vs say a Model 3 overshadows a year of using LEDs bulbs in your house vs incandescents. Yet no one even thinks about it.
People are incredibly illogical when it comes to EVs.
Nobody is concerned about the range of a gas car because we can fill their tank in five minutes and there are gas stations everywhere.
The only times I've been concerned about the range of a gas car was when crossing Australia east to west on the Great Central Road on a Toyota Landcruiser. There was a gas station every 400 km and I couldn't skip one because the car couldn't do 800 km. Yet, we could refill in 5 minutes. No need to stop for the night at each roadhouse.
In that case, I'd strongly advise anyone doing the same, to have enough fuel to cover 800km and some. If that means you have to lug 80L in jerry cans, so be it, because in such situations you cannot assume that those gas stations even have fuel, or it could be closed for the weekend. It would seriously suck to be stuck there for a few days because you do not have more fuel.
You are right. I'd advise myself to do that now. That journey happened 20 years ago so I don't remember the details. Maybe we did have some cans or maybe we were just fools used to the gas stations of Europe's highways.
The article nails it really. The core problem here is that a small minded swap from ICE to EV is only a mild implementation improvement on top of an already fragile transportation system that is riddled with problems.
The government could really get the ball rolling by incentivizing a switch further by by adding more stick along with the current carrots, adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing, but that is likely to be unbelievably contentious as it is in Canada.
The bigger gains have always been a more fundamental transformation of the transportation system from car oriented to a multi-modal system of moving people around via walking/cycling/bus/train.
The article suggests that this is expensive but I don't really think it is. Cycling infrastructure is unbelievably cheap compared to everything else, and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities, which unbelievably remain outright banned in so many places.
Our entire approach to town and city building is fucked. People/professionals all vacation to places like Tulum (etc) where you can just walk through little slices of paradise on foot (or scooter) and reach everything you need sans car, rave about how great it is, and then go back home and continue designing and building the worst imaginable human experience infrastructure.
> adding a carbon tax to make ICE vehicles less appealing
Taxes are already built in, heavily so — on fuel, registrations, etc.
The #1 way to push the stick would be to dramatically raise fuel prices.
I'm personally an overall fan of ICEV over EV, but if you wanted to do it, raising fuel prices at the exact moment ICEVs in the U.S. are becoming bigger & heavier would greatly increase the incentive to move to EV.
"and walking is made more viable at the stroke of a pen simply by changing the zoning and building code to actually allow people to build walkable neighbourhoods with retail amenities,..."
This is an easy claim but unrealistic in North America. For the Boomers that have lived in single family housing for decades, those who also represent the larget voting block in most major cities, you're expecting them to forfeit their percieved "quality of life."
Have you seen large apartment projects in US cities, they are atrociously designed, with the vanity of walkability but rarely deliver the NYC or San Francisco level of walkability that they are selling.
Yimbys would do well to insist upon better replacement products.
> Yimbys would do well to insist upon better replacement products.
I have long ago learned that I can't think of everything. By allowing someone else to think and rethink the problem instead of insisting on a solution we can do better.
We have many examples of mandated replacement products where the ground floor retail I so strongly went is intentionally left empty because there is no demand. We have many examples of other things that sound good in the design phase but turn out not to work out for whatever reason.
Thus I want to allow property owners to as much as possible do what they want. Some things they will try will turn out to not work out. Then they will try something else until someone hits on a winning idea and then all developers will copy that. Thus I will allow you to build a pig barn right next door: so long as your pig barn cannot be smelled in my yard I'm okay with it - in this way people can figure out how to build great neighborhoods without me having to work out all the details including about things I didn't think about.
The problem comes when you take the incentives that are supposed to make the cars less expensive and you use them instead to sell people more expensive cars. Turns out that pushing people to the limit of their ability to borrow is not a solid long-term business strategy. Gee who would have thought?
Guess who still knows how to build inexpensive cars?
The car manufacturers have been going after the top end of the market for obvious reasons - it's the first thing to do when your battery supply and manufacturing capacity and electronic components are or have been limited.
There's got to be a point where that stops working. Perhaps it has arrived more suddenly than expected because of inflation due to ...... natural gas and petrol prices.
As for range, it's obvious that people who drive a lot will get a Return on Investment from an EV sooner than the rest of us and thus they can justify the purchase to themselves. So their demand for range is what is being satisfied. My need is for a car with modest range that I can easily afford - no need for fancy infotainment or acceleration or status. I'm not a good target for car companies till they have satisfied higher profit segments of the market.
All car sales have stalled significantly. Now are there issues to EV sales, maybe? but a larger swath of people more than any other time in recent history can't afford new cars.
> Drivers saw the vehicles around them getting bigger, so they wanted bigger cars to make themselves feel safer. Automakers argued that this was proof that people wanted only big cars, so they cut small models and made existing vehicles bigger, which made people with smaller cars feel less safe — you get the picture.
This statement (that drivers buy bigger cars to protect themselves from big cars they see on the road) is unsourced, and seems ridiculous to me. I found some surveys where people cite safety as a factor in purchases of SUVs, but that says nothing about whether an "XXL" SUV is (or is even assumed to be) safer than an "XL" SUV. It especially does not attribute causation: whether or not people are buying larger and larger vehicles reactively, and in an endless feedback loop. That last part sounds like somebody's personal theory.
My in-law’s hybrid Jeep just started on fire while charging in their driveway, confirming what I was starting to consider an irrational fear of EVs. I’d rather move around on exploding gas than go anywhere near these gigantic bricks of highly flammable, inextinguishable chemicals.
A missing part of the "flawed" plan: it was relying on expectation that battery ranges would improve exponentially thanks to all the "breakthroughs" that were published on a regular basis to get views on tech news site.
Except, no, it still does not work as a drop-in replacement, so you have to change the whole society instead, which sucks because we're kinda on a deadline here, aren't we ?
To put it mildly "the engineers got their estimates wrong, the salespersons oversold, and now we have to do a massive redesign of the product to give you only 60% of what you used to have".
Or, to put it less mildly, "everyone lied, and now we're in trouble".
There's multiple layers of efficiency, the cell, the pack, the motor, the heater, aero, lightweighting.
And then the BMS, thermal management and charging improvements and greater provision all allow for smaller batteries (which reduces weight and allows for smaller batteries recursively).
Not to mention cost reductions in batteries and electrcity. Overall a 2023 EV is more than 2x a 1997 EV.
As an EV owner, range doesn’t matter to me beyond ~200 miles real world or so. It’s the 10-70% charge speed that matters the most. And advances are being made there- see KIA/Hyundai.
What happened to EVs is what happened to all new car sales.
Reminds me of the time a couple decades back when a bunch of power plants went offline in Florida, and the only news article about it was about how a nuclear power plant stopped.
I think it makes a really good point. I drive an EV, and agree with two main points:
1: It was more expensive than an equivalent gas car
2: Range anxiety is real
I might have bought a $20,000 car with 100 miles of range, used it for almost all of my driving except long trips, and been happier having saved $25,000
1. Yes, the only relevant point
2. is only an issue for people who don't actually own an EV. With Tesla's charging network (which is getting adopted by _nearly_ all EV manufacturers), _nearly_ everyone will have no range issue at all. The exception is rural America and pockets of poor coverage, but that is a minority.
I have a Tesla, and I still have an issue with the range. I’m going skiing this weekend and having to build three charging sessions into my trip doesn’t sound very fun, plus cold weather kills the range, so I’m gonna take a friends gas car instead.
we have a car that's fun to drive up and down the mountain because we live on the other side of the mountain from civilization. when we want to do a long drive on straight roads, we rent a land yacht that's much more enjoyable. this isn't a hardship at all. why do people who only need to take one or two long trips a year get the least bit worried? buy the cheap EV with enough range for your day to day and rent something fun for vacations with the money you save by not buying the extended range ev. this isn't a marriage. it's a transportation purchase. be flexible, get where you need to go, and have fun doing it. electric plus vacation rental is the way to go.
“Rent something fun for vacations” is a hassle, isn’t it? It’s a step backwards from a gas car which can do everything an EV does, but with (essentially) infinite range.
Not for many, I suspect. I mean, in my lifetime I've moved half a dozen times, but I don't own a moving van. I've hauled tons of sod and sand and concrete across the years but I don't own a super duty truck. For occasional use vehicles, I rent and that way I can use the top of the line and task appropriate vehicles. It's an optimization problem. If the value of a jack of all trades outweighs the value of few specialty tools for you, cool. Others will make different trade offs .
It's just not true. My town of 80k population has one Supercharger center with 8 charging stations. The next nearest one is over 50 miles away. That's not at all practical for someone who can't charge at home.
Why can’t that person charge at home? Really anyone can charge at home, except for people who don’t have parking (aka live in cities), and any city is going to have good supercharger infrastructure .
Expensive is relative. Model 3s and Model Ys are often cheaper than the comparable luxury competition from the BMWs and Audis of the world. Sure, a Corolla or a Kia are cheaper, but that's not the same market.
I've driven a friend's Model 3 a handful of times and ridden in many different Teslas over the years. I don't think the interior quality of the Model 3 is competing favorably with Audi. M3 seems to have acres of uninspired plasticky surfaces, while Audi to me wins by miles on design, materials, and overall execution in the interior. I'm not a Tesla hater, but I think the sales they're winning are not on interior quality/luxury grounds. (Another friend's $100+K Model X was nicer in the seating area than I recalled the Model 3s being, but still suffered from a too plain/plastic dash, door cards, and other flat surfaces.)
It's subjective I guess - coming to a Model Y from an Audi Q5 and driving a 3 series BMW for our second car, I prefer the interior of the Model Y to either of the others. Either way, between the fit and finish, performance, and the infotainment system, a Toyota or a Honda is not the right class of vehicle for comparison. Beyond that, a stock Tesla will blow the doors off of any non-performance luxury vehicle in its class, and often even outperform the much more expensive performance models.
I live in a city that's built for pedestrians and public transport. I have a twenty year old car because there is no value in selling it, but otherwise a car is pretty useless; I mostly use my bike instead.
Charging needs to be more convenient like gas refueling is. Max 5 minutes in any town or remote station. It is only achievable with battery swap/rental system - such already function in Asia for scooters.
Exactly. Many frequently cite the lower cost of charging the car vs paying for gas, but don't acknowledge the extra time spent.
Let's say I spend $500/mo on gas for an ICE car. That's roughly 6 fill-ups per month at the gas prices where I live for a full tank that gets me 350 miles of range. How long does charging up an EV take for the same kind of range? How long does it take for 6 full recharges per month? Filling up the gas tank takes me 3 minutes on average, that's about 20 minutes per month. I bet EV recharging takes a lot longer, but even if we're generous and we say 20 minutes for a full 0-100 charge, that's 2 hours a month. 2 wasted hours of my time is worth far more than $500 to me.
When I'm driving my car, and specifically refueling, most often it is not on some long journey where I could use the 20 minute break from driving to stretch, go to the bathroom, etc. It's during commuting where I have other stuff to do. That extra time spent waiting for the EV to charge is just wasted time to me -- I don't want to sit around futzing with my phone or 'relaxing' -- I have shit to do. And no, I can't charge at home because there's no way that's happening where I live, nor do I frequent any shops/malls that have charging stations that I can rely on, nor does my workplace offer such a service.
Let me quote myself from the comment you replied to:
> And no, I can't charge at home because there's no way that's happening where I live, nor do I frequent any shops/malls that have charging stations that I can rely on, nor does my workplace offer such a service.
At this point the whole greenwash thing, do I really want drop one environmental disaster tech for another? With old car it is at least the devil we know, and it is superior tech from user point of view.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
I feel that the headline subverts the lede somewhat. This is in line with most articles like this, where the big headline is a surprising/edgy “EVs are FAILING due to this ONE WEIRD THING” and the body of the article is “EV sales climb for the 15th consecutive quarter, but the quarter-on-quarter increase is slightly down on last quarter.”
I think the central problem for me boils down to some fairly essential math.
When you are fueling up a gasoline vehicle, you are drawing something like 10-20 megawatts of effective power for the duration. And remember, this is pretty much any gas station. Now, what kind of power output can I expect at the highest end supercharging station under the best possible circumstances?
The solution seems to be hybrid where you have options. Certainly, using electrical charging allows you to manage the prime mover's carbon emissions better, but you'd be able to dramatically improve adoption if you had a backup plan for less enthusiastic or diligent customers. I suspect most consumers don't have "minimize carbon emissions" set as their #1 priority when purchasing or operating an automobile.
If we really wanted to, how dense could we make a gasoline generator? I know we can make the actual generator incredibly tiny. What about the engine? What if we are hedging for the "just in case" and aren't managing full-time emissions? Remember - most consumers just need a psychological safety blanket. You are probably never going to run this thing.
I now know a few people who own an EV without the ability to charge at home.
For what I hear that is a non issue. Most of them need to charge 1-2 times a week and do that during their grocery shopping or sport activity at public charge points. Non of them complained about that even during longer trips.
So if the infrastructure is there (it is where I live) this doesn't really seem like a big issue if you drive ~50km/day with current gen models.
I agree most people don't care about carbon emission. EVs (even mid-range ones) are fun, powerful and silent cars.
> If the government and automakers are serious about making transportation more sustainable, they should be incentivizing smaller vehicles, hybrid cars, and public transportation like trains and buses.
You can't really expect automakers to like trains and buses. This leaves us with government.
Smaller cars, hybrid are OK. Trains and buses work well hub to hub and inside large cities. They are not OK in the countryside where population is sparse. People know that and it results in people of large cities doing without cars and people in small cities owning at least one per family.
I didn't own a car 2012 to 2020 when I was living in a large city. I did 400 euro of gas per year for two years in a row and ditched my car when I had to pay a larger sum for a repair. Plenty of taxis fit in a 400 euro and we started to have fleets of rental cars that you can pick at the side of the road without reservation and notice. That doesn't work with low population densities.
I don't live in a large city anymore. Actually I live in a very small town and life here is unthinkable and unfeasible without a car.
So, ditching driving could work for most of the urban population but not for everybody in general.
For myself, someone who actually wants an electric car, a big part of the hesitation is that I'll have to basically give up my garage to our cars.
As is, it's basically a detached workspace - so my family having to park two cars in there makes an electric car a massive loss of usable square footage.
It would also likely mean having to rewire my garage which had an actual Fusebox from the 70s - a cost I'd love to avoid.
I’ve thought about that. There is a fence immediately right of my driveway and an alley immediately left. I have very little space to install any sort of pole, and as I live in Minnesota, what little space I do have is needed badly for snow storage. It’s already a problem, last winter the snow was stacked above 6 feet either side.
The left side of my garage potentially has room for a charger to be mounted to the face of the garage, the right side does not.
How long are the cables generally? If I could charge both cars from the left of the garage with like extra long charging cords it could maybe be workable if not a tripping hazard. I also wonder how flexible the cables are in -20°F to -30°F weather? Do they get stiff/brittle?
The cable lengths can vary. The EVSE I recently installed has 24ft of cable. I can't speak to what the cable is like in that cold though, around here my garage rarely gets below freezing.
This headline is just wrong. Sales growth is down, but sales are growing.
That said, what bugs me about these articles is the parroting of stats about how the average driver drives 40 miles a day. But for most drivers, the "average" day is not actually a typical day, and doesn't tell you anything about the capabilities they actually require from their vehicle.
I average 25 miles of driving a day, but most days I do no driving. And then there are the handful of days a year when I do 600 miles in a single day. There are long stretches of the drives I make that have few if any charging stations. I assume the more populated stretches have more, but I don't see them when I'm stopping for gas or restroom breaks. And while I could probably prepare for a 600 mile EV trip on a route I take regularly, if I were driving to different places all the time, I would be far too anxious to rely on my ability to find working, high-quality chargers at the right intervals.
The range anxiety issue is the same sort of issue we’ve seen preventing heat pumps from becoming more widespread than far less efficient heating sources until more recently.
Consumers seem to focus on the circumstances under which the new technology performs its worst and judge it against the performance of the old technology in this specific scenario, with little regard to how common or likely this scenario may be.
It begs the question if this is a marketing problem, a generational problem, or a simple matter of dollars and cents — that is to say: Does this kind of problem only go away when the new technology is just so much cheaper that it’s impossible to rationalize choosing the old?
Obviously it’s some combination of these things and more, but personally I think there’s an outsized effect of marketing. Here’s why: Take a look at the top selling vehicles in the US and you’ll find a large number of heavy duty pick up trucks, for example. However you’ll also find that something like 10% of consumer heavy duty vehicles actually haul anything substantial on any regular basis.
Now, take a look at the ads for these vehicles (or really any vehicles — not to pick on trucks) and you’ll find they are selling a lifestyle fantasy: Off-roading to a private beach with a surf board and your dog, hauling lumber from a forest to your family’s cabin, heroically helping a close friend move into their new home, a family road trip to Yellowstone…
It’s January 2024 and Americans everywhere are resolving to spend more time with their friends and families, to do more things outdoors, etc. They can finally get to it this year once they’ve got the (literal) vehicle to achieve this fantasy, so only then nothing stands in their way, surely…
It’s this kind of FOMO that is driving most range anxiety, because people see their vehicle in the fantastical terms they were sold, not the reality of how they’re actually used.
> While bigger batteries allow drivers to travel farther between charges, they also make the cars heavier, more dangerous, more expensive, and worse for the planet.
Bigger vehicles in general are safer than smaller vehicles. If you are in a 2,000lb car with a 5 star safety rating, you will still probably be killed in an accident with a 6,000lb truck that has a 3 star safety rating. Despite all your advanced driver aids and BS. You will die, and the 1995 Ford F-250 owner will walk away. Mass is the most significant safety feature you can buy. Don't let some journalist in a suit tell you any different. He only wants you to drive the Corolla because he's driving a Suburban.
Personally, I buy cars based on my enjoyment of them. To buy a car for any other reason is silly. None of your friends or family will remember that time you got 55mpg on vacation, but nobody will forget the adventures you can have with a 4x4 on 35's.
They are safer overall because if you don't choose one, you are at a disadvantage. There is no risk to owning a larger vehicle. Conversely there is a risk with owning a smaller vehicle. When designing a vehicle for safety it is the primary objective to increase the safety for the occupants. They are the customers of the safety product. I am not paying for features that diminish my safety for the safety of people that aren't in my car. Other people can be responsible for choosing the safety features that they believe are most effective. Whether they choose correctly or not is not my problem.
Well there is the risk of seeming like an asshole to everyone else. Like, EVERYONE else, not just a single person. But that doesn't seem to be your concern.
You seem to be grossly overestimating the people who think like you.
When you park your new Suburban in your driveway, your neighbor is most likely to say, "Hey, nice Suburban!" rather than scoff at your pedestrian killing death machine.
> Over the past few decades the American auto industry has become obsessed with huge vehicles.
>...Drivers saw the vehicles around them getting bigger, so they wanted bigger cars to make themselves feel safer.
>...made existing vehicles bigger, which made people with smaller cars feel less safe — you get the picture. Meanwhile, road deaths and injuries soared
Instant eye roll. The author is literally making up their own version of history when the facts aren't even on their side[0]. The author generalizes the entire US government into some strange type of groupthink where apparently everyone thought replacing ICE vehicles with EVs was a "slam dunk". It's not only factually incorrect but it's just piss poor writing.
Here's a slightly different take: When I first tried electric cars, I absolutely loved them and really wanted one. However a few things to consider:
1. My country's infrastructure when it comes to electric cars is appalling. I'd be fine in the city but outside the city, I'm pretty screwed.
2. Winters: though climate change has softened winters down considerably but still, the fact that a full charge in summer gets you 250km and the same charge gets you less than 50 in winter is something I won't be able to work with.
3. The skewed stats about how eco-friendly electric cars are. I mean my 3 liter diesel is arguably more eco-friendly if I employ similar tactics of presenting the data: I drive it once a week for single digit kilometers.
4. Musk: let's just say that he made sure I hate electric cars and anything he's involved with. I can't stand his ego, lies and hypocrisy. Let's just say that if he goes missing tomorrow, I won't miss him a single bit.
I just got my "configure your Cybertruck" email. Unfortunately, I have an outdoor parking spot in a rented apartment and running power to charge there would be difficult/impossible. Yet, I would like a cybertruck.
I am going to try to buy a house in 2024-2026 so I can have a charging spot/garage so I can buy the EV, although not in a huge rush given the local real estate market (Puerto Rico), hassle of moving, etc (and relatively few miles/yr on my present car, although it's a 2006 and gets about 10-12mpg).
I wonder how many people are in similar situations. A PHEV would actually be the optimal new vehicle for me -- no need to charge, exempt from 40% import duty, and highly efficient in stop and go traffic -- but I want the Tesla. (I've also never owned a new vehicle, and kind of enjoy owning an old/cheap enough truck that if anything happened to it I'd be relatively unconcerned.)
I guess I am in the minority looking at all the comments here, but I only use my car 1-2 times per week, and that means 350km+ usually on a trip (there and back, and no not even NL has charging stations everywhere).
A car with constant 400km+ range, in colder weather at 100km/h highway speed is still no way cheap enough to be worth it.
It's relative to personal preference, economic status, and general logistics. If your living conditions and/or lifestyle support EVs, do the thing if you want. Stick with ICE otherwise.
Although, I do have to say that I think EV benefits can materialize without national adoption.
If the majority of people were to prefer EVs in a densely populated city, for instance, then conditions would likely improve for everyone who lives within the boundaries of said city due reduced emissions. Not to mention minimized road noise! It seems like every other car in Atlanta is a Hellcat and 02:30 is their doughnut hour (kill me plz).
In an ideal world, we could use EVs for daily life and high speed rail for long distance travel. But that'd involve tax dollars and that'd take away from the military industrial complex's bottom line, and we can't have that!
Strangely, the first paragraph "the EV myth" has nothing to do with EV's, but is spot-on:
a doom loop of consumer preference: Drivers saw the
vehicles around them getting bigger, so they wanted bigger
cars to make themselves feel safer. Automakers argued
that this was proof that people wanted only big cars,
so they cut small models and made existing vehicles bigger,
But it was just profit driven by the pricing power to get bigger margins from lack of competition at the low end.
That happened for lack of political will: when gas first went to $4-5/gallon in the U.S., politicians should have promised to keep prices there or higher with taxes, to pay incentives for people to buy cars that are smaller, fuel-efficient, or carbon-free.
Now we're stuck with 10+ years of SUV-sized vehicles.
It is all about cost. Who can afford the cost of a new EV? Not the average household around me.
Next I can guarantee the moment widespread adoption has taken place the new road taxes will be added into the equation wiping out the savings EV drivers currently experience.
Plug-in Hybrids are the best of all worlds, but currently ridiculously expensive. I wanted a plug in hybrid minivan, but I couldn't justify it even after the tax incentive. It should be the default engine configuration, not some "premium feature"
The range anxiety myth really annoys me. I drove my family of seven across (NY-SF) and up and down the country (NH-FL) three times in a Model Y and charging was super easy. The computer did all the planning for us and there were plentiful crazy fast V3 stations in pretty remote areas. Charge times were spaced out and short enough that we were always waiting on the humans to finish using the bathroom, not the car.
Maybe range anxiety is a thing for non-Tesla cars, but that will change soon with the universal adoption of NACS.
The apartment charging issue also hasn’t been an issue for us as most garages have chargers.
I encourage anyone skeptical about this to just check out their favorite route in abetterrouteplanner.com
Tennessee's state parks are (almost always) FREE TO ENTER, and all of the EV-chargers within (Rivian-badged, will charge anything) are FREE TO USE — and yet I rarely seen them used, even at those within city urban areas (i.e. very easy to access).
I think until electric vehicles can reliably and safely work (in leiu of e.g. a Tesla Powerwall &c) in both directions with the grid plug-ins
...and until legislatively we can STOP PENALIZING EV ADOPTION WITH ANNUAL FEE INCREASES UPON EVs, only. E.g. in Tennessee, EVs (& Plug-in-hybrids?, IIRC) the annual registration fee is about 4x a gas-only vehicle [so $120, instead of $30, depending on county].
Only then can we fully justify lugging around 2000 pounds of LiFePhos...
> Though the new-vehicle sales figure is high, data from Statistics Norway indicates the total share of EVs on Norwegian roads in 2022 was only about 20%
I followed the link buy couldn't find the source for this claim. The linked page talks about Registered vehicles (many of which will be car#2 etc), while https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/landtransport/st... about miles driven isn't split into EV/fossil. Anyone see where the 20% comes from?
At this point in time, you’re buying into the EV charging network when you buy the vehicle. In the U.S., that means Tesla. I just bought a Model Y. We really liked the Mustang and the F-150 Lightening, but the Tesla has the charging network. We drove from Detroit to Chicago last weekend and had no problem because there were ample Supercharger stations along the way. If we go to Northern Michigan it becomes a bit trickier but I think we can make it in warmer weather. It’s just where the infrastructure is at this point. We have an ICE vehicle for when we don’t think the EV would make it, but the EV is our daily driver.
The CCS network isn't bad, though it's not as good as Tesla. I drove from Texas to California and back in my Kia EV6. Of course, that's on major interstates, but looking at the map outside of large cities, it seems like the Electrify America and Tesla Superchargers were all in the same towns.
We haven’t updated our electric grid in 50 years. There are barely any charging stations available.
If I want to make a long distance trip I have to plan my trip according to charging station availability. I prefer hybrid for now.
About two years ago, I tested my friend’s Tesla and was so thrilled (I love fast cars, and it absolutely blew away any muscle/sports I had owned). But after some time, I got turned off by the absurd pricing, lack of chargers in my area, and all the other inconveniences/problems/bugs of an EV. The friend who has the Tesla is now disenchanted with the while EV experience and wants out. EV ownership is unnecessarily complicated and until we vastly improve our infrastructure, work out the bugs, and standardize everything, they won’t get widespread adoption.
What are you even talking about? EV's require far less ongoing maintenance than ICE cars and if you have charging at home, you're not stopping for gas all the time in the middle of errands etc. There are almost never "bugs" and if there are, most are taken care of by over-the-air updates whereas any problem in an ICE car requires you to go to a dealership.
My experience has been that 99% of EV owners I've talked to say they'll never buy another ICE vehicle.
For those folks who think they're saving the planet by driving an electric car, they need to realize most of the power for their EV is generated by fossil fuels and natural gas -- not wind, solar, or hydro.
In some places, but share of wind and solar is increasing fast. Where I live we are 103% wind - that is we generate more electric from wind than we use (it is exported to other regions nearby and when the wind isn't blowing we do import power from other sources).
Meanwhile your ICE is 100% fossil fuel. And the ICE is less efficient at turning those fossil fuels into power than a central power plant.
- I buy my cars used for less than 10k€
- I just have one car
- I sometimes have to drive 500+km
- I have no way to charge it at home or at the people I visit
so I'm in the people that are not going to buy an electric car soon
Every time these same low tier troll comments. Can someone point me how to block these trolls? I couldn't see anything in the FAQ about blocking/muting.
One thing that have not been mentioned why i still do not have an EV. Recovery form loss of the power grid. My cost to store diesel for extended period compared to electricity is an insignificant fraction. For diesel I only need a tank, stabilizer, and a hand crank pump.
Can keep it for years. If I make the vehicle propane, I can do it for decades. No additional cost over time. This is not so for electric.
EV is excellent for short, in town trips for now. And, this is not a USA thing as noone likes to be stuck on the side of the road, no matter of the country.
Reading this thread gives me the creeps. So much entitlement. As if owning multiple cars or being able to drive 1000s of kilometres for holidays is a human right.
Having kids and reading this thread is fucking depressing.
Some areas are built around automobiles. I'd rather not be financially burdened with buying/maintaining vehicles for myself, for my wife, and for my son. Unfortunately, most areas of the USA that are affordable are also built around the expectation that people have automobiles. While mass transit exists, it also isn't reliable in many of those selfsame areas. There's no sense of entitlement involved, this is more "what it takes to make it" in some areas.
Driving 1000s of kilometers for a holiday also isn't necessarily the thing. When my brother was having some emotional issues that became an emergency it was a good thing to be able to drop everything, get in my car, and drive out to see him. When my sister was in the ER about 1200 kilometers away, same thing. People argue for flight in those cases, but that would have taken longer and been more expensive.
As for kids, while things may be difficult in the future, I have faith that humankind will face and overcome the challenges thrown at the species. Humans have done so in the past, and I trust that they will do so in the future. Further, humans are not responsible for situations/actions that they had no hand in, had no say in, and have no control over. If people really want to start pointing blame for the way things are, they will inevitably be pointing fingers at some dead person or dead group of people. We can deal with things now, but unless someone can get the US congress to stop giving oil companies corporate welfare (voting hasn't helped despite Americans voting for candidates who had this as a campaign promise), I do not see anything changing.
I reality we could do much better than EV’s, since their production still has a large impact on the environment, and we should instead be focusing on cycling or using public transport, instead of driving everywhere.
I don’t have much hope for this, given what I see here.
Producing cars at the scale we're currently at is what's most troubling. EV's won't save us, we have to reduce individual car ownership and push for alternatives (car sharing and public transport).
Until they can produce an EV that doesn’t feel like a massive downgrade in connvience, performance, cost, basically all the ways normal people measure the decision of buying a car, I’m not sold.
I like the fact it takes a few minutes to refuel my car, and it’s the same process regardless if I’m traveling 5 miles or 500. I don’t need to deal with charging stations, and if I run out of gas I can take a gas can to the car and problem solved. I can also store as much excess gasoline as I want just by having an extra container and if I take it with me, I can basically define whatever range I want.
I also don’t mind stopping at gas stations and it’s part of my routine where I like to talk to the people there. Sitting alone for an hour in a parking lot where I have somewhere to be isn’t my cup of tea.
I don’t want a vehicle that gradually looses half of its range over time, then has to have over $10k invested (sometimes quite a bit more) in a new battery every 100-150k miles. It’s like buying a gasoline car where the engine not only wears out and performance greatly degrades, but is virtually guaranteed it will always need a complete engine replacement.
I don’t want to worry about greatly reduced range in the winter. I don’t want to worry about a battery fire. When’s the last time you have seen a gasoline car spontaneously combust just sitting in a garage? Despite having a lot of flammable liquid it just doesn’t happen.
I also expect the resale value of the car to be reasonable, at least consistent with a good quality gasoline car.
Then there’s Elon Musk. His toxicity is reason alone for me to delay any EV purchase (not just Tesla) for as long as possible.
Outside of the tech echo chamber, I think I represent the majority of people who aren’t interested in EV’s and likely never will be. I wouldn’t care if they had a full self driving car, or make the car out of glass, or put a giant screen in it, I’m not buying it.
Have you stopped to consider that I don’t have a garage? That many, many drivers don’t have a private garage and their own EV charger? Basically anyone who lives in a regular apartment doesn’t have a garage and thus can’t charge their car at night.
If EVs are to succeed they need to work for the masses as good or better than what we have now. Not just your rich techie with a Tesla parked in their private garage in Palo Alto.
Less than half of all vehicle owners have access to a garage or carport with an electrical outlet.
If EV’s are to have mass appeal, how do you reconcile that? Most apartments have few (or none) EV chargers. I can barely get my apartment to follow through with maintenance requests, let alone install an EV charger.
Why bother with that hassle when my Honda Civic that already gets 35 mpg that I bought for $12k cash works just fine?
48% already have access to a charging outlet. You're right that's less than half, but that's pretty dang close to half. I'd say 48% of drivers being able to handle charging right now is mass appeal. I mean that's many millions of cars.
34 percent had private, off-street parking but no access to electric outlet. I wonder what percentage of that 34% could add an electrical outlet for <$1,000. That outlet will last 20+ years, not exactly a big cost over that time frame.
> I can barely get my apartment to follow through with maintenance requests, let alone install an EV charger.
Have you stopped to consider the majority of car owners don't live in apartments?
I'm not telling you to buy an EV today. I'm not saying EVs are a perfect fit for everyone. But they're a fine fit for a huge percentage of drivers today. And for a lot of people these hassles pointed out above are actually bigger hassles with ICE vehicles such as refueling time. It's a much larger market than just rich techies in Palo Alto.
You’re right, they are a good fit. If all you do is commute short distances, have a garage, own your home, and want to install an EV charger. And have terrible resale value and have a paper weight once the battery goes.
There’s a reason the used car market for EV’s practically doesn’t exist: people who want a car but don’t care if it’s EV or not see all these drawbacks. How else do you explain terrible EV resale value?
The people who are buying EVs are basing the purchase decision on the fact it’s an EV and don’t care about the drawbacks or differences, so they’ll buy new. These are not price sensitive consumers. An EV to them is more than a car, it’s a part of their personality and persona. Which is fine, to each their own.
> How else do you explain terrible EV resale value?
Does the data actually show that? I've got a 2021 Mach E Premium that was ~$54k new at the time I bought it (prices were all over the place). I got a $7,500 tax rebate on it. That's $46,500 cost. I see used ones listed for ~$39,000. That's 84% of it's value retained over soon to be three years. Is that really poor resale value? A lot of cars I've owned in the past had way worse resale value after a similar length of time.
And for the longest time Teslas had positive resale value, and the had some of the highest held value in the auto industry. It wasn't until Tesla started aggressively cutting prices this became untrue.
There's certainly some EVs of there with poor resale value, but they're also generally some of the worst EVs out there.
> If all you do is commute short distances, have a garage, own your home
I'm not sure. How long does it take you to plug in and unplug every day? Sure it is only a few seconds, but those add up. The ICE is a few minutes every week or two.
I don't plug in every day, only a couple of times a week.
So maybe 20-30 seconds total every week or two. Compared to 5+ minutes every week or two, which is how long I spend with my ICE. That's at least 10x longer.
Lots of FUD in this post, but this one sticks out:
> When’s the last time you have seen a gasoline car spontaneously combust just sitting in a garage? Despite having a lot of flammable liquid it just doesn’t happen.
I’ve never seen an ICE or an EV catch fire. I can count the number of car fires I’ve seen on one hand, but ICE cars do spontaneously combust:
Hyundai/Kia:
> Some of the fire risk issues were so severe, vehicle owners were encouraged to park their vehicles outside and away from their homes or other structures in case the car spontaneously caught on fire.
Ford:
> Ford issued a fire safety recall for over 39,000 vehicles, urging vehicle owners to park their cars outside due to the increased fire risk. Drivers reported fires while their cars were unattended and a burning smell and smoke from the front passenger area while driving.
Mercedes:
> This defect allows water from external sources to get into the electrical connections of the wiring harness. Water on electric components can cause short circuits, leading to an increased fire risk if the ignition is turned off for long periods of time.
> and if I run out of gas I can take a gas can to the car and problem solved.
Fair. IMO there should at least be an emergency slot for a short-range battery to get you a few miles.
> I don’t want a vehicle that gradually looses half of its range over time, then has to have over $10k invested (sometimes quite a bit more) in a new battery every 100-150k miles. It’s like buying a gasoline car where the engine not only wears out and performance greatly degrades, but is virtually guaranteed it will always need a complete engine replacement.
Sure, but also the engine doesn't need (so much) servicing in the meantime. You can pick your poison — and yours preference is of course valid, and I suspect the norm — but there's no perfect answer.
> When’s the last time you have seen a gasoline car spontaneously combust just sitting in a garage? Despite having a lot of flammable liquid it just doesn’t happen.
We have ZERO incentives to change these cars with electrics; why would I change my convenience to put gas in the established gas network with the dubious charging station availability (Eastern Europe)?
I drove a Hyundai Kona electric last year; well, when you drive it at 150-180 km/h - the battery dies quite fast :)
I am not convinced AT ALL in electric cars. Maybe in 20-30 years ...
Honestly, there’s something very Eastern European about your comment. You own two unnecessarily powerful SUVs, driving waay over the speed limit in Bulgaria seems somehow relevant to you and you still wonder why you should be inconvenienced by EVs while ecosystems are dying left and right beyond any doubt. With this mindset you actually might be one of the last people to understand, yes.
You know what is fascinating about hydrogen fuel cell technology that uses the same electric motors that EV uses?
A hydrogen leak is somewhat a non issue as it dissipates with no fire whatsoever due to the pressure hydrogen has to be under to stay at the low temps required.
And its the same issue in the diesel usage case where its actually being burned instead of generating electricity for the output to drive the vehicle.
The only downside will be the same expensive replacement of the fuel-cell itself compared to EV batteries.
I have an aging 2011 Nissan Leaf with a realistic 55 mile range. I charge it at home with a 15a extension cord. I drive it every day. Occasionally I give it a boost charge at charging station.
I am in Seattle. I can get to Issaquah, Bainbridge, Everett, Tacoma and back no problem. If I had a _modern_ electric car with a 150 mile range, I could drive to Vancouver BC or Portland instead of taking the train. I don't think electric cars should have a range over 200 miles.
The headline is not true. EV sales are still increasinf YoY. The rate of increase has slowed, but it went from +75% YoY to +42% YoY. So it's still increasing quite rapidly.
For those with EVs or considering EVs, do EV buyers buy with the intent of keeping the car and running it into the ground?
I have no problem buying a VW or Toyota and keeping it running until it gets so old that it is no longer feasible. I don't buy an EV for this because I don't think it would make it nearly as long. I might be wrong, but that is my mindset.
Going with this, I feel this limits EV buyers to those who intend to get a new car every few years.
We did. According to our estimates of electricity vs petrol, we would break even (vs petrol car) after about seven years, assuming it was valued at zero at that time. Now we have driven a bit more than we estimated, so it has been less costly than a petrol car. The range has dropped perhaps 5% in the time, which is hardly noticeable. The AC compressor blew up four days before the warranty expired, so let's hope it lasts another few years.
The next purchase is probably 3–4 years in the future. At that time the child is older and can stand some longer road trips, which means we are going to want more range.
I bought a one year old used Leaf back in 2016 and still use it. The range isn't great with only 50-60 miles, but it works well for my commute and getting around town. For longer trips, I use my wife's car. I've considered buying a newer EV with longer range, however, I don't need it, so I've stuck with the Leaf and will probably drive it for another few years.
Keep in mind, newer EVs have better temperature control with longer lasting batteries than the ones on my 2015 Leaf. And my car started with only 85 mile range. But I knew that when buying the car.
I want to buy one as well, but there are few things which i want to know,
1. can I buy a used one? what about the battery life? I live in EU, my primary mode of transport is bike and public transport, buying a car is not a necessity but I would buy mostly for getting around. So I rather buy something bit cheaper.
2. How durable are batteries, been reading that getting a new one cost fortune.
I’d love to get an electric car, but I’ve just spent too much time and effort clawing back a scrap of privacy for me to be comfortable driving around in a mobile telemetry collection machine. It’s not just electric cars, obviously, but I can’t buy an old electric car from the pre-surveillance age.
Maybe things will change between now and when my current car dies.
For how long before those old vehicles are not practical? You will end up spending more in $$$ (or time) in the bodyshop than the car is worth. You will be rebuilding engines and transmissions. Sure it is possible to keep old cars working as daily drivers, but it is more cost effective to replace them after a while with something newer - modern assembly lines are very cheap ways to build something. (or course a car only a few years old is cheaper year)
I bought an EV on December 18. On December 19 I took my family on a 2400 mile road trip up the US east coast and Canada, with multiple days of all day driving.
It worked out fine! Driving the car was also much more enjoyable than driving our loud gas car. Yes, we stopped to recharge every few hours, but I also needed to give my mental focus a break from driving, too.
> buyers in Norway "tend to be in higher income brackets, often using their EV as a second car."
They've got it backwards: buyers in Norway are using the EV as the first car and their older ICE vehicle as the second car, for when they want to do longer trips. If they share driving time between cars, they're still going to drive less in the ICE car.
The article makes it clear that sales of EVs in the US are still increasing but the rate of increase has slowed.
It says “…sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed”.
@dang - This headline should be changed to the article headline “What happened to EVs?”
Sorry but NO. I have choose an BEV for a simple set of reasons:
- WFH in a zone with p.v. is a reasonable choice, I live in a home and I have p.v. so at least partially I can recharge from my own energy when the Sun shine, beside that I can still recharge at home from the grid, meaning no needs to go somewhere just to give juice to my car;
- state incentives that coupled with less energy expenses to travel almost put the TCO of my car on par with a equivalent new ICE;
- some "small bonuses" like here and there free parking in paying areas of various cities, access to "emission free" or "limited circulation" zones of some cities, a pleasure to drive, option to activate A/C from remote without polluting other parked cars nearby, similarly keeping the A/C on in case of a long traffic jam and so on.
The point though is that for what I get a BEV is absurdly high priced. It's reasonable price should be LESS than an ICE counterpart, because there is far less inside, less fine machining to build the parts, less to assembly them, less for me in range terms, less in MTBF and so on. I've choose and entry level Chinese EV (MG ZS long range 2022) because of that. The crappy crapware on board is not much more crappy than the crapware on board of any new vehicle, and all of new connected crapware on wheel are a national security and a personal security threat, I chose to accept that simply because ALL car's now are such a nightmare. The rest is just an economy will by some to remove the ability to own a personal transportation mean to the masses, and still retaining the ability to remotely lock those who can still afford one.
Most people are not Citizens and attentive enough to IMPOSE by public will in furor to end such practice, but still smart enough to understand the crappyness and their side implications so they simply choose to stick with old vehicles as much as they can. That's is. Is not a rate toward glorified golf cart, that's the OEM will, it's not about range anxiety (instead about knowing that the large battery you have the less charging cycle you do in a timeframe, so the long it last) witch is STILL just sufficient for most use cases, not more than enough since sometimes it's cold, we are in hurry and on steep roads where a 450km WLTP range became a ~200km real range. That's just PR bullshit to sell chairs with wheel to be sold in dense cities just to move few km per day, ignoring the fact that such model is economically untenable.
The editorialized headline is not correct. From the article:
"Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets."
There is a best of both worlds option, in theory, which is a car with a much smaller battery than can still be fully electric for a commute.
We're wasting our battery capacity on cars anyway. Grid storage is much more important, and cars have the worst possible power demands for use with batteries.
Rather than doom and gloom based on personal EV demand, I'd love to see the numbers on corporate EV adoption too (corporate fleets and electric semi trucks). The push for renewables in states like California show an entirely different story than what this article suggests.
The "road trip problem" wouldn't be a problem if folks could casually get on a train to the next town over etc.
It really speaks to the broader issues of North America where Canada and the United States declined to build improved rail service for decades on decades. Whoops.
Some friends of mine bought an electric car, thinking they could go on a road trip about 80 miles away with us (it was fully charged before they left).
They weren't calculating the weight of other things they brought in the car for the trip and would have ran out of charge in 30 minutes.
Full electric is skipping an important step. It's hybrid. Hybrid makes perfect sense. Boost gas powered cars and increase their milage. It allow us to build up the infrastructure to then convert to full electric.
Now, it's a shit-show where major car companies won't ever be interested in electric again because they are losing too much money.
It is not trivial to get electricity service upgrades that many homes need to charge electric cars. It is expensive and many utilities are backed up with service upgrade requests. PG&E in the SF Bay Area is currently quoting 12-18 months for service upgrades.
I think hybrids are the ideal car that addresses the current reality and infrastructure as it is at this moment in time. Most trips can be driven electric only, while also having the ICE to address those edge cases and long trips while at the same time removing range anxiety.
I live in the USA, in a suburb with many Chinese and Indians. Many drive Teslas. In contrast, Americans have a weird complex with Tesla/Elon and the other EVs aren’t very competitive yet, so we have this funny situation where the otherwise environmentally conscious high-income Seattle folk insist on buying ICE Subarus.
> When automakers pivoted to EVs, they focused on the kinds of cars that were already popular — which meant a flood of big electrified SUVs and trucks.
This point is flat out wrong. The only true EV- SUV that was available till the end of 2022 is the model-X.
I'm a fan of EV technology, I'm as green as they come and love nature, our lungs, and believe in climate change and the need to pull the planet back from that.
And I have absolutely no intention of buying an EV.
My balance is to run older cars, much less. I commute to work by train, I walk to the supermarkets and back, I cycle sometimes.
For longer distances, I might bust out our 2005 5 door Toyota ... for fun, I'll roll out a 69 Bug at the weekend ... I have some other classics in mind.
I got excited about EV's, Tesla, etc about 10 years ago ... and the passion has absolutely fizzled out.
I've spent time with a few and they're boring computers (and I love computers). I firmly believe that maintaing older cars and using them less is much better for the enviroment overall. AND, importantly, I still enjoy the hell out of my cars.
The only EV I got mildly excited about, recently, for looks was the ioniq 5 ... that looks pretty badasss ... but even that has faded. All the rest look like something I'd ride to the airport. They almost all have the design language of a taxi-cab.
I'm not sure what EV companies can do to reach me. But add me to the list of fewer people buying electric cars.
> Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea persists even though in 2023 the average US driver traveled only about 40 miles a day, and in 2022 about 93% of US trips were less than 30 miles. Still, in a survey conducted by Ipsos last fall, 73% of respondents indicated they had concerns about EV range.
This right here is the problem. For >99% of your yearly trips you do not need the range. EV's aren't 100% replacements of ICE. They are a replacement for urban, interurban and trips under 500 km range. For my country, for example, there's no two way trip that is longer than 200 km, and the ones that are are so rare and usually overnight so you have charging figured out.
That isn't good enough when you consider how much these vehicles cost compared to a used ICE car. Charging infrastructure is terrible outside of some states, whereas gas stations are plentiful even in the middle of nowhere.
The people that think "I won't need this range" aren't buying EVs, they are using Uber, transit or Hertz.
European perspective, Opel's lowest range model Corsa (ICE) starts at 17k EUR while Opel e-Corsa (EV) starts at 33k EUR. EVs are a status symbol, not a wise financial decision, for most people. /thread
We need a ton of infrastructure build-out for EV chargers.
There was funding for EV chargers in one of the recent infrastructure bills, but while the money is there the execution appears lacking. They've barely built anything.
Sure it was approached not in the way it had to be. It requires a long-term commitment - longer than duration of one administration. And it requires actual mandates, like we do in EU. Simply put, there are norms of how many electric cars should be sold and on the road in every country every year, and countries face steep fines if they don't. There is no way to object apart from leaving the EU which means instant economic and social death. So things move along quite well here. It might look like socialism, but hell yeah, if it works, why not?
U.S. needs to have state by state mandates which are actually mandatory and provide irrevocable mechanisms to maintain them regardless of administration in power, it needs high tax on gas (make it more expensive than in EU - maybe $10/gallon? because people make more), and ban or extreme high taxes on large cars, especially large gas cars. That progressively increase as share of EVs increase.
Median age of a new car buyer is 53. These people are not going to voluntarily change. They need to be forced to.
The American system of government has fairly onerous limits on federal power. We have been fairly clever at subverting those limits, but setting state by state mandates for EVs on the road doesn’t sound like an easy lift to me.
Then it is bound to fail and will only happen in a very uncomfortable, to say the least, manner where fuel for gas cars will have to be cut off due to global warming. U.S. does not exist in a vacuum and no country will be able to just say "nah" when it's time to go net zero and everyone else did it already.
Time to get things more centralised, more organised, more orderly, more long-term. Somehow when an itemised, step by step, detailed plan with minute regulatory details to enforce it, that spans 30+ years, is adopted in EU, no one laughs at it, people know it will work because there are clean cut mechanisms of enforcement that go above national level (and politics in European Parliament isn't at all populist unlike national level one).
Can someone advise me when you have a family of 4 kids? Thinking of buying a Ford Explorer. About 30k for a 3 years old one. I believe there are no equivalent EVs. An old model X is just not practical.
I don't have four kids, but I am really interested in getting an EV/PHEV minivan eventually. Hopefully more vehicles like the ID.Buzz come out and prove a bit of a market for it. Right now, the only PHEV minivan in the US market is the Chrysler Pacifica, and I'm not entirely sure on the reliability of its drivetrain.
But yeah there's currently not a lot of 3+ year old used EVs out there because a lot of models are barely even three years old and haven't even been produced in mass quantities for 3+ years. This situation is likely to change over the next 5 years or so.
3 kids, and lack of better options is why I'm still driving my 12 year old minivan. Your options are find something with an ICE and convert it to EV - while this is possible it isn't practical for most. The id.buzz comes this summer, which looks like the first practical option.
Seems like a hit piece. The same old BS FUD as always. The EV sales are slower than expected and can be explained by only one simple fact: cost. However, battery prices (the dominant cost) has been falling steadily and will keep falling. We'll get there eventually, albeit not as fast as we wanted.
PS: I've been driving exclusively electric since 2012 and haven't owned an ICE since 2016.
This article really confuses the problems that legacy car manufacturers have with switching to EVs, with EVs in general. EVs work, just look at countries farther ahead in the transition, or ask the 1.8 million people who bought a Tesla last year. The transition is in full swing.
Tesla's excellent supercharger network is already more than sufficient for roadtripping in the USA and Europe, and now is open to non-Tesla EVs. This piece of writing is just a poorly researched bit of trash.
They have (1) worse range, they're (2) heavier and (3) more expensive. 1 and 3 are a big deal, but except for these metrics, aren't EVs superior in every respect to ICEs?
One big problem is that the ceo man-child has made Tesla toxic. This has cost the brand and the market a significant amount of credibility.
Their abysmal build quality and parts monopoly don’t help matters either.
Now he picked a fight with the labor unions of Scandinavia.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he tanks the whole industry.
I don’t as many people follow Musk as closely as you think. Everyone in my circle is buying Tesla if they are buying EV. It’s the “obvious” choice because you see them everywhere; if you want an EV but don’t want to think too hard about it you get Tesla.
I agree, in my circle (Asian tech worker) no one cares about Musk’s shenanigans. They just want a practical EV with a charging network that just works. It’s always fun going to dinner parties and the driveway is full of white Xs and Ys. The Tesla hate comes from an insular online bubble, but it doesn’t seem to affect EV sales much.
I want to drive as much as I want the IC/EV car that I want with the range that I decide, whenever and wherever I want.
I dont care If the common HN guy decides to buy the next Apple Car because the fancy screens or the expensive Tesla paid with the startup Options, I want a car I feel proud to own for many many years to dedicate time to work in the engine and to be able to fix it by myself.
Somehow it's a matter of freedom that, I'm observing more and more this days, has been lost in the past of this forum.
There is a big media push to say EV market is in trouble. If you look at the price change dynamics for batteries, it's a constant decline. In fact, the first Tesla battery pack battery and the current one have a price diff of 30x.
Right now, the cost goes below 100 kWh.
That is an industry agreed threshold of EV becomes cheaper to produce compared to ICE cars.
So this and next year, market will introduce several EVs that are cheaper compared to ICE.
Add to this government funding incentives.
Plus, the side effects of expensive batteries pushed companies like Tesla to adopt stamping techniques, higher levels of automation, etc.
So, the typical buyer persona will switch from upper mid-class early adopters to people who need a cheap car for their day-to-day use.
That's going to be another EV rush, where they will be selling everything they can produce.
Fun fact: China surpassed Japan as the biggest car exporter. And battery revolution held mostly by Chinese companies will strengthen that lead x2 since they are the most capable of producing cheap EV's.
Why would you buy a gas Toyota Corolla if you will be able to buy an EV that is $5-10k cheaper? And btw, Chinese manufacturers are buying factories in Mexico to be ready to export EVs to the US.
Scary conspiracy theory: The Western world is very scared of this wave of cheap EVs, and that's why we see these ridiculously misleading articles.
post-WW2 world: The West produces cars and sells them to the rest of the world; no one else is capable of producing good enough ICE cars.
post-2025 world: west is not able to compete with the price and efficiency of Chinese-produced batteries and hence EVs market overall.
I never thought I would be a simp for electric cars, but after owning one, when I hear someone driving an internal combustion engine, I just feel bad for them - such an inefficient, dirty system.
A lot of common talking points from the anti-EV FUD going around - EVs are heavier, sales are going down (even though they're not, according to the data presented in the article), EVs don't have enough range. Ask an EV owner and they don't care. It's almost like there might be vested corporate interests (say, Big Oil?) pushing a narrative here?
Someone does need to pay to maintain the roads, however, and if ICEs become a smaller and smaller part of cars on the roads, the gas tax will cover less and less of the cost (and they already don't fully cover the costs of road maintenance).
Many states are already addressing this by imposing additional fees on EVs. For example, states like California, Minnesota, Illinois, and Texas have implemented annual fees for EV owners, which are specifically designed to offset the loss in gas tax revenue and contribute to road maintenance.
In my state (MN) I'm actually paying more in annual EV fees/taxes then if I drove an ICE vehicle of comparable value
Somehow this wasn't an issue when it was everybody switching from compact hatchbacks to SUVs and pickups, which is a similar weight increase as going from an ICE to EV sedan. (In practice, what happened is that nobody bothered to pay for the increase in road maintenance and we just live with poorly maintained roads now.)
I'm ignoring the weight increase, just saying that people that only own EVs will not pay the gas tax, and will therefore contribute far less to the cost of road maintenance.
There's a similar shifting dynamic in solar power, where much of the cost of utilities is actually for distribution and maintenance, and as long as you're connected to the grid you're contributing to that cost, but to encourage people to use less power more of the cost is priced into the $/kWh price, which all breaks down when you're generating most of your own power but still using the grid.
It's an interesting economic problem, and I don't think there are any super obviously "fair" solutions right away.
Oh, that's true. Oftentimes these are ways of shifting costs from people inside the new market to people in the old market. This actually accelerates adoption of new technology, because not only do you reap the benefits, but you offload the externalities onto people who haven't switched yet, incentivizing them to switch.
I can think of a lot of examples, eg. Internet media destroyed the monopoly of old media, which made it uneconomical to do serious investigative journalism, which further reduced the quality of old-line media, which accelerated the switch to Internet media. Private/magnet/charter schools brain-drain the best students out of public schools, which decreases the quality of instruction, which means that you need to start looking at private/magnet/charter schools if you want your kid to have a decent education. Automobiles incentivized the creation of road networks and parking lots, which took up so much space that you can no longer walk anywhere, which requires that you get a car.
Usually it results in the total destruction of the old industry, and then the new industry develops some taxation/regulation scheme to cover common goods within the new technology regime.
Seeing as only 41% of road costs are paid for by license + fuel taxes, those EV owners are already paying for more than half the cost of the roads through state/federal income taxes.
By the time this is a concern, our elected and institutional government workers will have figured out how to take the tax out of charging stations or car sales or whatever.
HN title is wrong. From the article:
"Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric..."
Discussion is about a more slowly growing market - not one in decline. YoY sales are up like 40%. This is FUD.
"While it may be a sexy and industry-friendly approach to the climate crisis, an EV-first plan isn't the most effective way to tackle the enormous challenge we face."
the first line of the article "a record 300,000 electric cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023"; the spreading of FUD around EVs continues, nothing new here; this time it is from the opposite end of the spectrum from the crowd saying "Getting Americans to ditch driving altogether would be the most effective way to reduce emissions, but it would require a massive rethink of our transport system."
classic case of the great being the enemy of the good;
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric
The only thing they're seeing is "but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed" -- no shit, have you seen the interest rates and price diffs?
And which manufacturer grew the most? Oh that's right the only all-EV one. Just so happens Tesla dropped prices to keep monthly payments roughly the same.
Correct. Tesla just closed another record quarter. And BYD just surpassed them as the largest EV producer in the world. Both of those things are true because the overall market keeps on growing very rapidly. Which means Tesla can break it's own records and yet not be the largest anymore because another company is growing even faster.
We're in a major economic down turn because of things like global pandemics and other macro economic events like the conflict in the Ukraine. Yet, this has barely impacted the growth of the EV market.
The article is rehashing the myth spread by traditional car manufacturers that the reason they are selling so few EVs is that nobody wants EVs. Which is patently false. More people bought EVs last year than any year before. Just not from them.
The actual reason they are producing so few EVs is that they are struggling to produce them cost effectively. There is no demand problem if they price them right. But if they do that, they actually loose money on the few EVs that they do produce. The reasons for all this are complicated and relate to their outdated manufacturing and supply lines that are optimized for their now obsolete ICE vehicles. They can build EVs but they just aren't very good at it yet. Too many parts. Too many suppliers. Too slow to assemble them. Lots of supply chain issues to source batteries, chips. Lots of issues with software. Etc. They are basically about 5-8 years behind technically.
Tesla, BYD, and others don't have these issues because they built their EV manufacturing from scratch and have been optimizing how that works for the last ten years. Tesla became profitable about six years ago (and ridiculously so). BYD has been growing in China and started expanding internationally only recently. Both are profitable and rapidly growing market share. And they are now able to produce vehicles much more cheaply and are waging a price war that pushes prices down for everyone else too.
And its about to get worse as they are getting ready to mass produce cheap (<~25K$) EVs by the millions. All the signs are that 1) this is actually happening in the next 2-3 years 2) there are exactly zero signs of demand challenges whatsoever for any of those vehicles 3) this will start decimating the market for traditional ICE vehicles and 4) This will continue relentlessly beyond 2026 until there's nothing left of that market; probably by the mid to late 2030s or so.
So, yes the article, and the site it's on are not great. To put it mildly.
Food delivery drivers in our area are from what I've noticed mostly using scooters. Because in traffic they can get one where in half the time; not to mention costing less to own and operate then even a Prius.
That said when my partner and I see a Prius it's synonymous with Uber i.e. that Uber just cut me up.
I have noticed that the MG5 is making in roads though as the electric taxi of choice.
>Tesla, BYD, and others don't have these issues because they built their EV manufacturing from scratch and have been optimizing how that works for the last ten years.
The fact that Tesla and BYD don't have large, entrenched, auto unions to deal with is the biggest factor in keeping costs low.
GM produced the first modern EV, then recalled and scrapped them all. Nissan was far ahead of Tesla (on sales) with the Leaf.
Both could have easily won the race if they had tried, with the massive financial instruments they had availability, compared to tiny Tesla. Instead, they kept them as compliance cars because they 'had' to and continued to push for larger gas guzzling models with more profit.
I guess the financial analysts saying similar things are also dumb?
>This is all "a potential nightmare situation for GM and Ford," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients this month. Any threat to supply would also inevitably diminish year-end production and inventory, chipping away at holiday season deals.
>Tesla, which does not use union labor, is situated to benefit from any work stoppage at competitors, especially at a time when the industry is pushing harder into electric vehicles, Ives said.
>"Tesla does not face similar issues which speaks to the complexity both GM and Ford face going up against the EV leader Tesla, while trying to satisfy rising union demands," Ives said. "If a strike happens then ultimately production and the EV roadmap could be pushed out into 2024 and delays would be on the horizon at this crucial period for GM, Ford, and Stellantis."
Try Google. Refer to quarterly reports by mentioned companies. There's also some fun comments from the likes of CEOs of VW and other companies commenting on the undisputed lead in manufacturing that Tesla has over them. VW actually used this as a reason to motivate some recent layoff rounds. There are lots of other reports.
It's a fact that the large automaker unions like UAW are not present in Tesla operations. It's also a fact that BYD has no North American operations and obviously UAW doesn't operate in China.
Do you think the presence of UAW makes a car manufacturer more or less cost efficient?
>This is all "a potential nightmare situation for GM and Ford," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients this month. Any threat to supply would also inevitably diminish year-end production and inventory, chipping away at holiday season deals.
>Tesla, which does not use union labor, is situated to benefit from any work stoppage at competitors, especially at a time when the industry is pushing harder into electric vehicles, Ives said.
>"Tesla does not face similar issues which speaks to the complexity both GM and Ford face going up against the EV leader Tesla, while trying to satisfy rising union demands," Ives said. "If a strike happens then ultimately production and the EV roadmap could be pushed out into 2024 and delays would be on the horizon at this crucial period for GM, Ford, and Stellantis."
IDK who's downvoting you. We've been in "Schrodinger's recession" for the last 3 years. Everybody has been accurately predicting the other shoe falling every single day while SPY is breaking records and the outlook on inflation looks like a successful soft landing.
Business Insider is blogspam. Pretty much anyone can sign up to write, and their primary goal is to get clicks not win Pulitzers. And they are immensely successful at it considering how consistently they show up on places like HN despite having no content of value. Forbes is in the same bucket.
"When automakers pivoted to EVs, they focused on the kinds of cars that were already popular — which meant a flood of big electrified SUVs and trucks. But massive-bodied EVs don't make much sense. Larger EVs require bigger batteries, which require more raw materials to manufacture, which requires producers to beef up their environmentally destructive mining operations. While bigger batteries allow drivers to travel farther between charges, they also make the cars heavier, more dangerous, more expensive, and worse for the planet."
WTF does the author think the ICE alternative is going to do better instead? Just as dangerous, even worse for the planet. You want to put in a paragraph in your EV article about how people are arms-race and status-seeking into bigger cars, fine, blame people for that. Don't blame EV's when this is what people want from autos anyway and of course it's easier for a new market entrant to get its foot in the door with the higher margin products. Every Model Y that isn't sold is a RAV4 guzzling 10,000 gallons of gasoline over its life.
Niedermeyer is a pathetic member/leader of “TSLAQ”, a group of people that think all of Tesla sales are fake, that Tesla is a large scale financial fraud like Madoff, and other completely insane theories. He has made it his full time job (literally) to disparage Tesla and other EV manufacturers.
Running the headline "Fewer people are buying electric cars" and then conceding that EV sales are rising at the start of the 3rd paragraph is embarrassing for the author Paris Marx and I hope he feels ashamed.
The point of the article is that rising EV sales, even at 87% in Norway (which yields only 20% EVs on the road), is not enough to fix the environmental problems of car driving. TFA talks about the need to end the car-size arms-race and the need for viable alternatives to car transportation as necessary for actually addressing the issues EV tax incentives are meant to tackle.
Agreed the title is useless, but I found the analysis insightful.
That observation is completely pointless. Yes, even at 100% adoption it will take a long time to replace the whole fleet of cars, does that mean we shouldn't be doing it? Just the fact they bring this up shows they have an agenda.
Tesla is also recognizing this fact and it's one reason they're pushing for robotaxis, because robotaxis can increase utilization by 5x, the same as selling 5x as many cars.
It is not a useless observation. Of course there is an "agenda" (strange word choice for "thesis" or "point"). Like I said, the point in the article is that there needs to be alternatives to car ownership and car-centric development to achieve environmental goals, and subsidizing purchases of EVs is not going to do that.
Taxis might help a bit, but I would want to see data or modeling on impacts for that.
It's strange you start out with "this observation is pointless" and then follow up with an example of a company making big investments and strategic changes based on "this fact". Perhaps it's not pointless after all?
In the EU we are constantly being fed this kind of drivel by journalists that echo the Volkswagen group's usual arguments almost verbatim, I don't think it's just chance.
The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded:
> Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea persists even though in 2023 the average US driver traveled only about 40 miles a day, and in 2022 about 93% of US trips were less than 30 miles. Still, in a survey conducted by Ipsos last fall, 73% of respondents indicated they had concerns about EV range.
93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips that are beyond the range of an electric car. It's no wonder that 73% of drivers have range concerns-- no one is concerned with the EV getting through their commute, they're concerned with the EV getting them to their distant family / weekend trip / vacation home / etc. The argument is a clear strawman; it's playing down what people have genuine concerns with and focusing on the range aspect that's obviously unimportant.
The edge cases are the important cases though. Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah I have a desk job but that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies.
I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
And for hosting occasional guests an extra bedroom, plenty of solutions exist for creating temporary sleeping space in the living room, while leaving your own bedroom to the guests. A small inconvenience to pay to save out a whole bedroom to pay for and maintain. There’s also the option of going on vacation together, which can be a really fun way to spend the holidays.
Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead.
My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution. I see so many people maxing out their house and car within their budget, and then talking about but never doing things they really want to, like that far away vacation, or that expensive hobby. I never quite understand why.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Ultimately people do things they enjoy. People enjoy different things.
I love hosting groups of people at home. Yes, it's hard work, but it's satisfying. The meal planning, excitement of preparing the house, cooking, having a big party at home - I enjoy almost all of it.
Having a party at a restaurant is a totally different set of activities - it needs longer term organisation to book a date, work out exact numbers, maybe pay a deposit. When the meal's over, everyone goes home. Doing it with kids is much harder. There's a different set of societal expectations over payment (people are much less comfortable being paid for in a restaurant than eating food you've provided).
These are different sets of activities. Some people enjoy doing one set more. That's OK. From my point of view - I'm finally in the position in the last few years where I can host large parties at home, and I'm really happy about it. To me it's worth the cost.
Also, in restaurants there is usually less to do - you either sit and eat/drink, or stand. Home parties have more activities - people can cook their own food, browse books, play with other things. They also last longer, and in the end it can be just a few last people chilling on a couch discussing life and stuff in general - can't have that in a restaurant.
And if they drink too much they can stay longer or stay over. No rush to get home.
It’s also cozier and you don’t feel pressure of having to get going after a couple of hours —any kids can find things to do around the house, be it gaming, TV, running, going off to a corner, whatever. Adults can group into convos of interest, etc.
If people are worried about food quality (rarely is food the focus, but if it were that can be catered).
In my experience if you care about food quality you must cook for yourself. Catered food is always cheap, mass produced, and lacks taste and nutrition.
It depends. Local caterers can be good. This is a good option for people who are not great cooks. But yes, if you order catering from a run of the mill place it can be average. Another option is to hire a chef.
But not really this. Many other parts of the world have much rarer house parties and much more done in restaurants with private rooms, etc being easy. Cultural norms and etiquette largely determines what we can enjoy and what is available, we aren't really following our own personal preferences most of the time.
In the case of many of these things there's an early outlay of a lot of money to then pretend the incremental costs is negligible where something with less actual costs might be a lot more enjoyable but is harder to disguise.
The "totally different set of activities" and much higher effort also means that it often just doesn't happen.
The same problem happens with car sharing: If you have the car in your driveway, using it is trivial. If you add booking a rental/shared car, going to the station, checking it for damage, ... a quick trip turns into a major chore.
And even if it may be overall cheaper to rent as needed than owning the "overkill" solution the whole time, it won't be much cheaper, because renting is ridiculously expensive. Short time rentals and car sharing around here are typically $50-100 per day and/or not that expensive per time but $0.50 per km which makes it prohibitive for longer trips. You can get an OK used car for a couple thousand and it will cost you way less than that in maintenance.
Self-delivering self-driving cars could alleviate at least the hassle (since you'd be able to reserve a fungible car from a citywide pool, for pickup and return at your door), although the cost aspect will likely remain.
Exactly this! It's a bit frustrating that there seems to be no acknowledgment of friction being an issue, even though the vast majority of our industry is practically defined by it.
Everyone who's ever worked on a website knows the value of being above the fold, the value of reducing a single click in a checkout, etc.
I lived car-free for many years, and while I had carshares easily available to me and went through the high-friction bits already (had the apps downloaded, accounts signed up, license verified, everything ready to actually rent) - I rarely did it (in fact I did it exactly twice in about 10 years!)
I sympathize with the argument here - having 4,000 lb steel boxes rolling around with a single person in them and no cargo is terribly wasteful, but a lot of the alternatives suggested assume a physics-experiment-like smooth frictionless surface that doesn't actually exist IRL.
Aren't you completely discounting the friction inherent in ownership of a vehicle? Humans tend to find clever ways to justify their irrational decisions, but there is absolutely more friction involved in owning a large truck that is used to haul cargo once a year versus having the same cargo delivered once a year.
Two things. First, the time of friction is important. Pretty much all friction points with vehicle ownership are distributed throughout the year, *and are amortized across all uses of the vehicle*. When you want the vehicle to haul the mulch you press the button and you get bacon. Contrast with renting a truck to pick up mulch, or renting a restaurant for a party, or putting your parents in a hotel. Those friction points happen every single time you want to do the fun thing, and happen when you want to do the fun thing. Press button, pay tax, *then* get bacon. There's a big psychological difference there.
Second, I think you're framing it as {truck + self pickup} vs {no vehicle + delivered}, but I think the more likely comparison is {truck + self pickup} vs {sedan + delivered}. Nobody's going to get a truck as their only vehicle that they'll literally only use a few times a year. They'll be choosing between truck and sedan as their daily driver (or truck as second vehicle). In the replacement case in particular (truck vs sedan) the friction delta is very small.
If you own the vehicle and it breaks you have to fix it - but most of the time it isn't broken. You need to pay insurance, but that comes in a regular bill, and so is easy to budget. In return for this you get a vehicle ready to use when you want to.
If you don't own the vehicle and need one there is a lot more friction: you need to figure out where to get a vehicle. More than once I've gone to get one and found they were sold out and so I couldn't rent when I needed one. More than once I've gone to get one and discovered the fine print didn't let me use it for what I wanted.
Yeah, the people acting like carshares and rentals are low-friction feel like they live in a different universe than the one I lived for over a decade.
Open the app. Oh no, the car that's near my apartment isn't available when I need it. Ok what else is around? Ehhh the BMW is pretty expensive and unnecessary. Ah here's a Honda... but it's a 25 minute walk away.
Ok so I have to walk 25 minutes just to start the car. Then I can go where I want to - but if I bring anything back I'll have to find street parking in front of my apartment building to unload. Then I have to bring the car back to its spot, and then walk another 25 minutes back home.
Oh and don't forget to gas it up, because unlike owning a car, with a carshare more often than not you have to gas it up on the way back to avoid a penalty. You roll your eyes slightly at not just having to drop by the gas station but literally paying for the rental time to do it. But it's fine, whatever.
Like, I get that lots of people find this to be fine (I did, for over a decade!) - but it's anything but low-friction.
Traditional rentals are even worse - unlike carshares their pickup/dropoff locations are nowhere near you, so now you have to think about an Uber!
Where is the friction in owning the large truck? Paying for gas?? Finding parking?
(US-centric view.)
If you live in a major urban center, sure. Paying hundreds of dollars a month for a parking spot would quickly convince me that car ownership was a bad idea. Otherwise, at least in the US, cities spread out to make room for the habits of their inhabitants. There's going to be easy parking where you live because that's what all of your neighbors want.
Of course, I agree that you should just have the deliveries... but I'm not seeing this as an argument why. The costs are not great enough.
You’re paying considerably more all of the time – the vehicle is 2-3 times more expensive to buy, fuel costs are similar, every component will cost more to repair, and, yes, most buyers will have to worry about finding a parking spot on a regular basis. Insurance and, often, registration will cost more, too.
Now, if you’re in the 20% of truck buyers who really need them those are necessary costs but most people are buying them as a lifestyle accessory.
There’s also a fairly large group of people who live in urban settings who think they need all of that but are paying more than the cost of renting on the few times they actually do. Those people have been very good to the manufacturers’ profit margins but unfortunately all of the extra pollution and lowered safety affects their neighbors as well.
That's the key people are missing, it's classic upselling. You're not comparing "nothing" to "truck" you're comparing "ok I get this vehicle that does X" to "or I get this other one that does X+Y".
This is the real reason the SUV has eaten everything, because the so-called "crossover SUVs" and other small ones are just fancy hatchbacks, and a car with a square butt will always be more useful than a similar sized car with a trunk.
The question was a large truck, but there’s also a complication here which might be fading with high interest rates: low rates, pandemic shortages, and improved wages meant a lot of buyers went upscale and that pushed the average truck sale price north of $60k, with a lot of luxury models in the $80k range. That’s what I had in mind for my comment.
I think gas and parking are good examples. If your truck has had 30% less fuel efficiency than a car, then you're going to spend 30% more of your time at the gas pump, huffing fumes, than a car owner for exactly the same outcome in terms of utilization.
Parking is similar. I can fit a small 2-door car into x% more parking spots in a city than a larger truck. So you can spend x% more of your time looking for parking spots. Maybe you're still looking for a spot when the car owner has already completed the errand.
As someone else mentioned, this friction is amortized over time so for some the psychological cost is lower, but for those who understand the principle of opportunity cost, it is a very real and tangible cost of ownership.
So address the fact that there are 4000 lb boxes doing 70 mph.
Physics, to a first order approx, doesn't care about the car mass, btw. It does care about A*Cd*v^3 though. Especially the v. A lot of problems depends on that v.
A couple thousand is probably not enough. But I think people do tend to exaggerate how expensive used cars are. You can buy a ~10 year old Prius for around $5k, for example.
That still seems a bit high to me, unless you mean older ones? A ten year old Prius is >$10k here [1] and I don't see $5k until I get back to the 2010 model year (14-15 years old, and starting to get a lot less reliable).
Yea, location is definitely a factor. With my zip, kbb.com puts a 2012 Prius v Five Wagon with 120k miles in a private party sale at between $5900-$8200. A bit higher than I thought, tbh. I bought a 2008 Prius a couple years ago for $4,000. I'm thinking I may have just been a little lucky with that deal.
I've found KBB valuses a bit low for used cars since the pandemic, FWIW.
Did you buy your Prius at the beginning of the pandemic? There was a brief period when cars got super cheap (no one was buying anything, sellers were desperate) followed by one where they got very expensive (manufacturing was blocked on missing parts, more people were trying to buy used since they couldn't buy new).
Car sharing is mostly about the 300+$/month you spend on a parking space and insurance not the minimum car you can own.
I used to drive so rarely car sharing would have saved me several thousand per year and been less of a hassle because I could skip annual inspections, gas stabilization, etc. Driving weekly and owning a car is probably worth it but drive quarterly and it’s a hassle.
Exactly this and the rhetoric of ‘spending on a house’ isn’t really a fair comparison.
When you buy a house there is an implied level of investment/saving as a by product of the fact that bricks and mortar in many countries are seen as a good store of value.
When you spend money in a restaurant it’s just gone, there is no chance of your annual meal/get together being counted towards your savings if/when you need to rustle up some extra cash.
There’s also the fact that it is almost always cheaper to host a meal at home opposed to paying for an entire group of friends/family to dine out.
95% of the country is completely undeveloped. The problem isn't a lack of space, but too many people wanting to live in the most desirable eras. Many people don't seem to realize that the housing boom in the 50s and 60s wasn't people just building these buildings in ultra-premium areas, but building them in cheap, relatively undesirable areas. But the mass of people moving to these areas ended up making them desirable, and ultimately also not very cheap.
This effect was so substantial that from 1950 to 1960 the population of most major cities actually declined [1], in spite of a rapidly booming population!
This is the thing people miss and forget, that there should be natural ebb and flow, but population centers are instead just getting bigger and bigger without really getting more dense.
(It's actually still happening, but people dismiss where it is happening as "suburbs" but if you live in a "suburb" that is 60 miles from "the city" and basically never go to the city, it's really it's own thing.)
Your own example is pretty interesting. From 1950 to 1960, the population of Reno (capital of Nevada) increased by more than 40%! [1] Of course you're right there was also a huge surge in commuting, but people weren't the only ones leaving cities. Businesses also moved outside cities, taking advantage of cheaper real estate themselves, and new businesses also cropped up to service the booming suburban populations.
And IMO this is all a much more reasonable thing to aim for. Density can only take you so far. There are hard limitations and it comes with lots of nasty stuff. I think the only reason things are taking as long as they are to naturally go this direction is because of the hyper-centralization of businesses and seemingly endless low interest rates, making companies with billion dollar valuations quite trite. And at that scale, the long-term cost impact of real estate in an ultra-premium location versus in the middle of nowhere is a rounding error. But monopoly money economics will end, probably sooner rather than later - and it may well end up solving this problem, alongside a slew of others.
In theory, it means that young families should buy the absolute maximum house they can afford. Stretch and limit spending in every other area as much as possible, then hold it as long as possible. Then "old people" can sell and downsize to trade space for cash.
Looking back, it seems like a lot of places looked a lot like this for a long time. It is fairly recent that we see people swapping every 4-7 years, at surprisingly high cost.
You could probably host just fine without the dining room. And most people in your position aren't getting enough enjoyment that they would actually miss much if they didn't have the room.
The earlier comment isn't a critique on what people enjoy. It's a critique on people's inability to estimate how changes affect their enjoyment, instead making things into an inflexible checklist.
Ok, but the poster had clearly explained a reasonable thing that they want to do. And keeps getting pushed and gatekeeped/kept on that stance for some reason.
The point is that for every one person with a good reason, there can be several people with a bad reason.
People keep taking everything personally when it comes to personal anecdotes when this is about mere majorities. Gatekeeping is not the intent. It's to speak of a broader group that has an impulse to want a thing, but many in that group will be served fine with alternatives. And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
Especially for gardening supplies, delivery has no real downsides, it's a straight money calculation.
> People keep taking everything personally when it comes to personal anecdotes when this is about mere majorities. Gatekeeping is not the intent. It's to speak of a broader group that has an impulse to want a thing, but many in that group will be served fine with alternatives. And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
No, no.
They are simply saying 'cater for the edge cases'. No more, no less.
We know what you are saying.
They're just saying that you're ignoring nuance to their detriment (true), and therefore you are not trustworthy in decision making (true).
No, we are not prepared to let you make decisions for us ("But many in that group will be served fine with alternatives"). No, that's precisely the problem - Centralised planning thinks that the alternatives are fine, and they are often not. Similar to Google not having a phone number to unblock locked accounts.
>And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
Sure. We will assume that this is charitable / general statement (if it weren't: It is this attitude that makes one unqualified to make decisions. They think they know better, and assume that the other person does not.)
> No, we are not prepared to let you make decisions for us ("But many in that group will be served fine with alternatives"). No, that's precisely the problem - Centralised planning thinks that the alternatives are fine, and they are often not. Similar to Google not having a phone number to unblock locked accounts.
You're making a jump here that is not at all warranted.
Many literally means many.
Not in the sense that they will get lucky, but in the sense that different people have different edge cases.
They're not trying to tell people what their needs are, it's that different people truly do have different needs.
A bunch of people are arguing that their purchases have to cater for needs that they don't actually have. Trying to argue them down is not trying to say nobody has those needs, it's that too many people are thinking about a problem for 5 seconds, not considering alternatives, and claiming to have needs, when the actual number is a lot smaller.
It's not about specific people being told they're wrong. It's statistical. We can count how many people are doing X or Y and it's not most people. People get aspirational about the future and make claims that are wrong. Or they consider a lack of an "expected" feature to be far more impactful than it actually is. It's not uncharitable to say this about statistical aggregates, it's a fact.
Yes, we live in a socialist / night-watchman / capitalist / legislative / etc. hybrid structure.
I'm not an absolutist anarchist, and I don't think that undermines my points (given an adult conversation where nuance and context is discussed).
We don't need absolutism across the board here (the "if you legislate against personal atomic bombs, you must be in favour of legislating against people having a 2mm knife blade!" whataboutism fallacy)
I think nobody in my country would say going out to eat is better than eating at home. Home cooked meals are way better. This is just a list of your personal preferences disguised as the right way to do things.
If you want a small house and flying around to vacations, you can do it without looking down on who decides for another trade-off.
100% agree with home cooked meals. You have the liberty of choosing among 100000 ingredients. No restaurant offers that variety.
And for the "dining room just for parties" argument from above: it is actually possible to invite your neighbours, your friends, your colleagues, ... to dinner more than once a year. I almost never had people turn down such an invitation.
Heck, I have a kid in my life who has a severe peanut allergy. Going out to eat is restrictive as we can't go to some restaurants, so cooking at home is way easier on many occasions.
We also like to sit an eat together "just because", so like you point out, a dining room can be used day-to-day, not just for parties (though it's also great for those).
It has nothing to do with the food, nothing at all, it has to do with intimacy and care. THIS is where I live and I invite you here, I take care of you because I care about you, THIS is food that I made for YOU, I'm sharing a part of my life, this is how I cook because I like it or because that's what my family usually eats or because I tried something new.
Maybe it's because I'm. Mediterranean and it's part of the culture but the idea that you invite someone to eat and it being about the food is oh god so depressing to me. It's like gifting someone a poem and caring about how good the poem is.
It depends on the household, and not exactly on the country and culture. However, those definitely affect prevalence. For example, I like to hold parties during which we cook together. But I have several relatives and friends who already prepares everything before anybody arrive. It’s not even family, because a lot of us do differently than how our parents and grandparents do. It’s a matter of taste.
That’s however a joke that home food is better. There are great home meals, and there are bad restaurants, sure. But the top is obviously restaurants. And not even just because they really know what they do, but it’s even way more difficult to get those kind of ingredients what they use. One time, one of my friends from one of the best restaurants from my home country (Hungary) left some beef loin from his restaurant in my fridge as gratitude. I made the best steak from it, that I’ve ever made. It didn’t matter how expensive meat I bought, or in which expensive meat shop. I tried different techniques, but no. I couldn’t reproduce it. Simply that kind of loin is not accessible for common people there.
> It has nothing to do with the food, nothing at all, it has to do with intimacy and care.
Right. So the act of cooking actually doesn't have much to do with it! Arguably, you are tying the act of making food to "intimacy and care" in a way that makes it feel to me like there's this big social pressure to feed people! There are a myriad of other ways to look after your humans.
I'm not from that culture particularly, but everyone needs to eat, and going to a nice restaurant can be a pain (e.g. transport) and be expensive as well. Having people into your home for a meal is a very good alignment of a lot of things at once; that's why cultures have been built on it.
Order some food, it doesn't even need to be from fancy restaurants. Low-end to cheap catering and delivery services (so not Uber Eats or such). You can prepare some appetizers at home if you really want some home made food.
Depending on where you order the food... people might not even realize you didn't cook it.
Slightly off topic, as we don't do this for guests, but one thing I do for cheaper takeout (which we have extremely rarely anyway) is order curry but cook rice at home. Although these days ready meals from some supermarkets (I'm in the UK) are pretty great, and you can get a half-decent curry for £3 or so, and again just cook your own rice.
Sharing meals is a cornerstone of human society. Nobody cares if you personally don't want to involve yourself, but the idea that it's the result of some social pressure is absurd. It is society or part thereof.
Honestly one of the most saddening comments I've read.
So why is it saddening to you? It's down to preference. Some people are natural feeders (and they are lovely people) but others aren't. The two coexist very peacefully.
You can feed your people because you enjoy it, me and my tribe of outliers can chill in other ways :)
FWIW: It's not like I'd ever let anyone go hungry!! Just that in my mind there's a big discrepancy between "fully preparing a home-cooked meal for several hours". If you're privileged to have the time, space, energy and knowledge to lovingly prepare big feasts for people, more power to you. Me and my cold-hearted mates will be content with, oftentimes, shoving some chips in the oven or frying a bag of frozen nasi goreng, or getting cheap takeaway to go with our beers ;)
But then why are we talking about having giant houses with huge dining tables? Invite as many people over as your living quarters can accommodate. Do whatever with them. Make whatever food. I agree with you that the value is not in the food but in the act and intention of making it.
I think this whole thread is depressing because it suggests you need a bunch of shit to be happy and have good relationships. But if you have good friends and relationships often you don't need all that shit. If you need a pickup once a year you probably have a friend you can borrow it from. Even better you can invite that friend to help you with the thing you need it for and help them with something else when they need it.
Enjoying it has nothing to do with it. It's better for you and better for taste even if you don't like it. I don't like brushing my teeth but I do it because it's better than not doing it and because I'm a functioning adult. I'm better at brushing than I was the first times I did it, and I'm also better at cooking than I was 20 years ago, because even if I don't enjoy it, I know I'll enjoy the flavor and the nutrition is good for me. This is basic "live your life" stuff.
Imagine lecturing people about saving the planet while defending going out to eat in restaurants or ordering all your meals.
There are many ways to life your life and thankfully in the modern day, you can live your entire life without cooking anything involved yet getting all the necessary nutrients plus enjoying delicious food.
It's just more expensive, so you need to afford it.
I'm intentionally skipping all the other soapboxing in the rest of the comment.
You can confirm that "probably" with 5 minutes of research and find out that the largest contributors to carbon emissions in eating are the production of the raw materials (which ingredients you use). Once that is controlled for, cooking method is the largest second factor (wood / coal / gas / electric). Once that's controlled for, going out to eat in a restaurant is worse than at home. The only communal eating that is more efficient is school / soviet canteen style eating, which is not what you were thinking about when you said restaurants.
Sadly, agreed. I love the idea of being self-sufficient and permaculture, but even myself as someone who grows vegetables on an allotment and batch-cooks nearly all my meals at home, I can't ignore the idea that, just as with agriculture, it's way more efficient to prepare food at scale than it is at the individual level -- unless we all shifted to just eating the food as raw as possible.
If we look at the full chains of:
- Equipment distribution (production and delivery of large domestic kitchen appliances)
- Energy distribution (residential delivery of electricity/gas needed to power kitchen appliances, and water)
- Space required in each home for a reasonably kitted out kitchen (more space to heat in winter, more materials used in building)
- Ingredients and materials distribution (including the production and packaging of intermediate food products made from raw products, since everyone's cooking with canned things, packaged things, cured meats, pastes, pasteurized things, grains, ...)
The restaurants, fast-food chains and ready-meal prep companies are able to operate on economies of scale that are vastly more efficient than the individualistic, nuclear-family domestic "you must cook home-made meals for your family, friends and guests" culture.
We've made eating out seem either:
- Decadent (cost)
- Unhealthy (take-out and fast-food)
But neither of those things need to be true.
The problem with scale is the storage aspect - preservatives we use to reduce spoilage etc., which arguably affect the healthiness of the food. "Just-in-time" distribution works well until it doesn't (see: COVID).
But I'd argue that the individual household probably spoils more ingredients than industrial production does - that just isn't evident; everyone has their little compost heaps or things go to landfill. Old ingredients go mouldy at the backs of cupboards, just as things run out their shelf life in supermarkets.
Maybe the raw-food vegans and paleo bros are on to something...
No problem, just charge your guests some carbon credits to offset for the meal you cooked for them. I even think there's an app there for you Dutch to easily request a transfer from friends and family.
It isn't about looking down on others. It is that in communities where the extra resource are spent on things like slightly better cars or houses eventually many of the local stores, restaurants or other places ends up closing.
Many on Hacker News have some sort of ambition. To create a startup, a side business, an open source project or have a hobby, be more knowledgeable or become better programmer. In theory that can happen having a home office and extra space in the garage. In reality it often doesn't because making any greater strides often requires coming together with others forming connections, exchanging information and sharing resource.
Yes, I can learn to cook for example Chinese food. But that isn't the same as having a good food industry with restaurants, entertainment, staff, importers and whatever else that actually enable a numbers of different experiences for many people.
Eventually many tend to realize that it isn't that great. But then they often end up blaming the government, the taxes, major cities, lack of investment or support, or anything other than the reality that they didn't invest in their local community neither through taxes for services or with their own income. But instead there are millions of dollars standing around in things like more expensive cars.
It isn't like I don't understand why someone would want those thing. I just don't think many who do want those things understand that to have a decent career many of their kids are going to have move somewhere where there are good education, successful companies, major airports or other resources. And then, while they get some use of their guest room, won't see them much overall.
There's got to be some name for the "tool fallacy". I like to buy tools. I like to have the capability to cut wood in certain ways. Yet I end up very rarely doing that.
I would like to have a personal garage workshop space. I can think about all the things I would build. I would like to be a person that builds things. But in reality, if I had it, I'd probably still be just sitting browsing Hacker News. It's just way easier than to actually get up and start doing something.
I've realized something similar with sports. I could go running any time, but I don't. I could buy some equipment that I rarely use. But if I sign up for some scheduled weekly team sport, and some friends are also going, it's much easier to keep the routine happening. Or if I do some sport together with my spouse.
The same happens with music. I could play and train on my own, and I do some. But it's really with a band and a commitment to an upcoming performance or upcoming recording session that I start more purposefully doing stuff, both on my own and in the rehearsals.
Computers, content and social networks and the pandemic have provided us opportunities to do cool stuff online and share with and learn from others, but I think we have atrophied some physical social aspects there. We need more electronics clubs or garage meetups or whatever method to do something as a group and share the motivation burden or get a bit of help etc.
The really boring answer is that if we could just go out and run we would and it wouldn't be anything extra. But that often isn't how the world looks. Just like how most of the projects we can do by ourselves in a home office have already been done so they don't lead to much.
It is when we do something with others that it gets better than average and the result in the form of being enjoyable or interesting is more than the effort of doing it. If we already don't have a lot of time, energy and motivation running isn't giving us enough to make it worth it. And often we don't because of other things or boredom.
Restaurant spending is one of the most wasteful sources of spending in America. If you sink money into a car you don't need, at least it has some sort of utility and ongoing (rapidly depreciating) value. Restaurants charge a huge markup and provide zero ongoing utility.
I personally hate to see the millions of dollars wasted on restaurant-cooked food, most of which is not good for you and a lot of it not even good. We would all be better off environmentally, socially, and financially if we returned to the earlier status quo of people cooking most of their own food. "Local communities" still thrived when there were 10% the restaurants there are today. In fact, they were much stronger. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the rare night out as a luxury. But the idea that not eating at restaurants enough is the source of some kind of decline is exactly backwards. Your insight that about the criticality of local connections is critical is true, but it has nothing to do with the number of local restaurants, and they have if anything hindered it rather than helped it. Inviting people over for dinner is an activity that has declined precipitously and forms much deeper connections than going out to eat and patronizing someone's (often vanity) business.
> I think nobody in my country would say going out to eat is better than eating at home.
You haven't eaten at a 2 or 3 star restaurant then. They use ingredients you don't have access too, using techniques you can't use at home and pair them with wines or juices you haven't heard about.
However good you think your home cooking is (I think I'm a fairly good cook), you don't come to the knees of a chef with such a restaurant.
Yes, they are not cheap. But neither is buying a bigger house.
And if it's about getting together, who cooked the food doesn't matter. Or even get together without food, that works too.
... I've eaten at enough Michelin-starred restaurants in my life that if you summed them it'd be well over 200. I'm not a stranger to fine dining.
... and I still want to host people at my house and cook for them?
Fine dining for you may be a strictly superior replacement to home cooking (or alternatively: home cooking is what you do when you cannot have fine dining instead) - but many of us don't see it that way. They are complementary.
Yeah, my cooking isn't Thomas Keller... but that's not actually what it's about? In the same way I'm not Chris Nolan but yet I want to take video at family events?
And if I can say so: seeing fine dining as a strictly superior replacement of home cooking is a regretful way to view the world.
It is very curious for me that in a lot of comments there is no allowance for even a possibility that there is more than a single metric of “betterness” for different people and different occasions.
What these “unnecessary extras” or in the contrary “smaller footprint” give is the increased freedom of choice for that particular individual’s situation.
There is no free lunch - every benefit comes with its set of drawbacks. Extra rooms need furnishing and taking care of, cars need maintenance and parking etc.
Different people put different multipliers for each of them.
And this is fine, by the standards of a modern western society.
Living in NYC I used to think this way. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else, from street food in Queens, Le Bernardin, Omakase only menus ...etc.
The 3 star restaurants get old very fast. too expensive, way too long to eat. Very pretentious. As I got older I came to value home cooking many times higher than any restaurant that NYC can offer.
I highly suggest people try these places to understand what is possible with food, but don't value them any higher.
I never said that you should prefer 3 star restaurant. I was responding to the specific claim that home cooked meals are always better than eating out.
> My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution
And that's fair enough, but I find the tyranny of "it works for me so you're doing it wrong" very real. In many areas, but in particular with electric car range discussions.
Thanks for reminding me what this post was about. After reading through all the depressing comments from people who think restaurants and hotels are superior to a family atmosphere at home, I had honestly forgotten.
> After reading through all the depressing comments from people who think restaurants and hotels are superior to a family atmosphere at home,
They don't say it's superior. Multiple things can be true at once. People often like to cook at home. It's all cozy. It also is a way to save money. People with smaller house have more disposable income, to splurge more liberally on luxuries, feel less constrained in their choice to go out. All those things are true. I think the main message is that people needlessly make conventional choices (e.g. big house, big car), and these choices then drive their decision making after the fact. They're reminding us that stuff (the actual tangible inanimate things) have a tendency to start to own you, rather than the other way around.
> but I find the tyranny of "it works for me so you're doing it wrong" very real
One could also talk about the tyranny of people living their freedom of personal choice to the maximum.
"My solution works for me but will never scale to work for the entire humanity as we're simply too many on this planet for that and also totally screws the environment for future generations, but hey, it works for me!"
Right now people have an issue with the edge cases of EV range. That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
I'm in a similar situation. My motorbike does, most of the year, ~50 km trips to go see my parents for the weekend (I take the metro or a bicycle for my commute needs). It could be electric, no problem.
But several weeks a year, sometimes on end, I'll go ride in the mountains where current electrical motorbikes would be useless. It's way cheaper for me to own my current motorbike (which I own outright) than to sell it and rent for my trips in addition to buying an electric one. If an electric motorbike could have the same range as mine and the charging infrastructure in the back roads were useful, I could see myself riding around on an electric bike.
It would be debatable whether buying a new motorbike when mine is still in perfect working condition would actually be better for the environment, but I'd say that's another question.
Also more importantly, the "edge case" argument is just another variant of "if I yell at people, the problem would go away". Rate of success for social problems: 0 (pretty questionable on personal ones too).
EV range concerns have an obvious solution: build more EV fast charging stations and guarantee cross-compatibility. Standardize the billing system (the EU strategy of "figure it out or we'll do it for you" would be a good one to pull on the automakers here).
The solution is not ever going to be another round of people posting caustic hot takes on social media trying to shame people.
Billing system is not standardized in EU though. And for some ungodly reason no charging company is able to just add a card reader, oh no, you got to download an app on your phone! And there's a whole bunch of charging companies, each with their own app. You can of course use a RFID chip, but you still have to add your card details in the apps and then add your RFID chip to the app for each company. I know there's some discussions about using the UUID the car exchanges with the charger and have a centralized payment system, but last I heard it's not going smoothly as every car maker and charging company wants to control the centralized system.
As an aside, range is not a problem with new EV's with 500-600 km range as long as the charging network is good. There was a lot of talk about range anxiety in the early days when cars had 150-300 km range and charging stations were rare. These days with charging stations on every gas station, mall, ferry port, grocery store, random parking lots and what not long drives are no longer a problem as long as you plan a little bit and don't drive through hundreds of kilometers of no mans land without charging up first.
Range is still a problem for many, just a reduced problem overall.
500km is a short drive for some, when you can only fast charge to 80% and cars get far less range in the cold. 500km becomes 400km at 80%, you have to start hunting at 70km range, and at 140km/hr that's just over 2 hours of driving.
(Speed reduces range too)
But as I said in another comment, this will self fix. Charging time will come down, range will extend.
When you can fast charge a car to true 600km range, even at 140km/hr at -20C, with the heater running, and in under 10 minutes, I'd say we're there.
500km is only 310 miles.. that isn't very good IMO, plus once you factor in cold weather, high speed(70-80 MPH speed limit is standard for my long distance road trips in western US), and only charging to 80%.. that ranges drops pretty hard.
Then there is all the routes that just don't have chargers, so you are limited to only the common roads.
Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
500 km might not be enough in the USA, but here in the EU? There are seven countries within that range of my apartment (including the country I live in), with a total of five currencies and six languages.
And only two of them are close enough I'd consider it a day trip.
That said:
> Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
I absolutely agree. 90% of the environmental benefit with much faster roll-out.
Grid capacity is a bigger problem than people want to admit, just saying charge at night isn't really a solution. My state is already struggling to update infrastructure just from legal marijuana (pot farms use a ton of electricity), more charging stations just makes that harder.
I mean conversely if it's not necessary, then it's not going to happen - that's how governments tend to treat vital services (and voters reward them for it: everyone's got an opinion on why construction crews are working on the poles outside their house).
The reality of grid upgrades is unless we make the problem worse, it won't get better.
> That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
TBH, that is mostly a communication problem. Tesla already does much better than most non-EV types realize. A shocking number of people think road trips require literal multi-hour charging stops. "I heard from this Tesla owner that he only charges overnight... I'd have to stop at a hotel every 200 miles!" sigh
Consumer education is still important.
Outside of a Tesla... road tripping EVs in the US is often not fun.
The problem is that that failure of the hypothetical scaling up is not priced in (an externality). In other words, individual choices are subsidized by the debt of the whole society. If we could agree on a tax that takes care of that, there’d be no tyranny and we can all go back to individual choices.
Sometimes creating sunk cost can increase the likelihood of things happening.
If I am a guest, I would rather use the guest room than a hotel room paid for by my host. The latter feels like I am free-riding, the first doesn't - even though the cost for a guest room is much bigger, it's already committed to.
Also, staying at somebody's place is a very different experience than staying in the hotel down the road.
With the hotel, you will leave at a reasonable time in the evening. With the guest room, you may end up staying up all night.
> Sometimes creating sunk cost can increase the likelihood of things happening.
If I buy a trailer I never needed, it does increase the chances of me using a trailer on a given occasion.
It does not, however, mean that I used a trailer any less than I wanted to before, and if I hadn't sunk that cost I'd have more money for more useful things. In your case, inviting for parties or going to restaurants more often and having more luxurious ones.
If you want to see your friends, don't buy stuff and hope they'll come use it. Invite them.
> If I am a guest, I would rather use the guest room than a hotel room paid for by my host.
If it's just one guest, they can sleep on the couch. Don't need spare bedrooms for that.
> With the hotel, you will leave at a reasonable time in the evening. With the guest room, you may end up staying up all night.
Not really. Leave late, stay up all night, whatever. The only thing they might care for is the checkout time if the hotel is expensive.
So they want to sleep at your place but are not comfortable having you around?
And if they have back pain they can't sleep on just any mattress either, as it might be the wrong hardness for them. And you might have another friend staying over so now you need two guest bedrooms for them both to have privacy, and both of which need fancy specific mattresses, ah and what if it's one of those couples that don't sleep in the same bed so...
Having an entirely unused room to cater to a very specific situation in which someone has to sleep in your house but also wants a hotel experience with a particular choice of mattress is a waste of effort. Guest bedroom by themselves is quite an American luxury thing. They're not at all a thing in Scandinavia unless you live in a mansion, and even then it would be weird waste of rooms to make spare bedrooms. Friends sleep on couches or fold-out beds if they need to sleep over.
> So they want to sleep at your place but are not comfortable having you around?
Yes, this is extremely common. All of my in-laws would go in this category, more or less. I might spend the night at their house, but it would be awkward to wake up with them in the room. Many friends who have moved far away and I don't see them regularly any more would also qualify.
> And if they have back pain they can't sleep on just any mattress either
There is an enormous population that exists between "can't sleep comfortably on a couch" and "needs some specific kind of mattress."
> an entirely unused room
Space isn't at a premium where I live, a whole unused room is no big deal. Plus if I have a another child there is a room ready for them.
That's the source of a lot of guest rooms, they are rooms for future/past children. My own guest room is also an office when there aren't guests.
If a space is repurposed from a previous permanent use, sure. Although, nothing is free, it's a more reasonable situation to end up in.
But then we've also deviated from the discussion of acquiring things with the intend to perfectly cover an edge-cases. On-topic, that would be like getting a long-range car because you drive the 1000 km constantly rather than for trips, and later lose the need and only use the extra range for leisure.
> There is an enormous population that exists between "can't sleep comfortably on a couch" and "needs some specific kind of mattress."
I'm actually not sure there are many people in that group. I don't think there's far between a decent couch and an "eh" mattress, closing the gap of people that cannot sleep on one but can sleep on the other. A decent futon or fold-out bed also goes a long way, and to theorize a bit I expect those that would not be able to have acceptable sleep on such would not sleep well outside their own home and bed regardless.
Either way, futons or fold-out beds are quite reasonable propositions comfort-wise and I sure wouldn't consider providing more for friends and family that needs to sporadically stay over at my home.
Home office with a fold-out bed/couch or futon, yeah. Guest room with a real bed, no.
I have the former, but the person clearly indicated that a couch would be insufficient to address back pains, in which case it sounds like they expect a copy of the master bedroom.
>But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Maybe we can skip it all and send them a gift card from Uber Eats?
If you think eating at a fancy restaurant is a substitute for being surround by family while you cook a huge dinner in a large, cozy home then I feel bad for you.
>I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution.
I bet if we looked at your life, "car" and "house" are compromises you are willing to make, "edge cases", but there are other things in there that you are not.
Can I ask why you are so concerned about policing how other people want to spend their time and money?
For casual food, I prefer to have people over. And I don't mind the preparation time and the hassle of cleaning up afterwards. Restaurants are very impersonal and don't have the same vibe as a home cooked meal.
Same with landscaping and other hobbies. The joy they bring you cannot be replaced by getting it done by someone else.
And I think the cost of having a truck versus a sedan is marginal, especially in the US where the roads are wider and parking spaces can accommodate trucks without any issues.
There is another thing at play with maxing out on your house, which is that in many places it is a damn investment (unfortunately) and the primary residence usually has tax-free gains, and things like being not means tested for certain benefits. So maxing out on the house can perversely let you do that travel a few years down the road. It's not great, but that's the system.
Housing might be a long term ponzi but we'll see I guess :-). As long as they keep devaluing currency it is not a bad bet. Especially in a metro area.
> the primary residence usually has tax-free gains
Property taxes are worse than capital gains in that the whole value of the property is taxed each year, compounding, rather than the increase in value when sold.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
I find it staggering that you would feel those are the same experiences. I feel there's a difference in what you consider to be a party and what people consider to be a party.
I also used to think like this, but ultimately it reduces your spontaneity / flexibility / optionality. What if you want to host a gathering last minute, but it’s a busy time for restaurants? What if you sold your car because your city has a car share, and last minute you want to get out of town for the holiday (just like everyone else)?
You obviously shouldn’t pay to cover every edge case, but if you can it’s worth paying for the ones you value.
Sure, but that restaurant is likely expensive and the homeowner won't get the $$ back years later when he sells his house.
Perpetual home price increases leads buyers into an "investing mindset". I don't particularly like it, but it is an easy one to fall into. This is doubly true since realtors make their money by encouraging it.
The point is a restaurant party would have to taste a lot better than home cooked food to be equivalent in value.
And I am a good cook, when the example above was given I was thinking it would have to be dinner somewhere like Chez Panisse for a party of 10. And even then it wouldn't be the same as a party at home--maybe SV tech people don't value this, but most cultures still value the social connection of cooking for ourselves.
It's not about being a good cook, it's about the joy of cooking and sharing a meal with friends. And the joy of having friends stay overnight and having a coffee together in the morning.
Spontaneity is the reason. In my mind if I have a truck (I used to) I could go to the big box store any day I want and pick up nearly anything in that store and take it home to do something. Its not hard to think ahead but if you feel the urge to redo your flower beds and you have a truck (or a van too) you can do it when the urge strikes and not have to be limited to only landscape places that deliver or having to rent a truck and then return it, etc.
Its spontaneity and freedom to do what you want when you want. Same goes for the OP story about EV's. The mental freedom of being able to drive across the country any time someone chooses is liberating vs. only being able to go 200 miles and having to plan out charging stations and wattages/volts/whatever.
>But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Just because an alternative exists now, does not mean it will in the future and also does not mean it is equivalent.
>Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead.
Congrats on choices that make you happy. Other people do have cars though, which enable your lifestyle and your landscapers probably do not have an electric or a car manufactured in the last 15years.
You just can't. You can deceive yourself all you want and skip all life events this way, but ultimately spending money cannot be substituted by not spending money and if attempted will cast long shadows onto your life if it going to exist at all. It's an ultimate bean counting, going over a same bag that never grows.
> A small inconvenience to pay to save
This thinking is literally penny wise and pound foolish. Taken me way too long to realize.
I've done the admittedly rough cost benefit analysis and for me it doesn't work out. There's hidden edge cases in each of these and other cases. I did optimize in other ways to make up for the inefficient choices though.
I have a huge house but live in a low CoL area where it costs the same as a condo in a high CoL place.
I drive a big passenger van but live in a small town where I can walk to the grocery store, gym, and library.
So you can mitigate in more ways than your suggesting.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties
ROFL no fancy restaurant will let me suspend a friend off the ceiling. Honestly most won’t be happy with board games.
Also, a home cooked meal is better - not because of the quality, but _because it’s home cooked_. And fyi cooking is a communal activity. The friends are in the kitchen then move with me to dining.
Not to mention I’m a solitary weirdo and I host people at least twice a month. Same with the last two generations of my family. The only time it was as bad as you describe (and “once per two years” is really bad) was when I was cripplingly depressed.
Edit: also, having a spare bedroom and a living room big enough to host even a dozen is hardly maxing out anything.
I wouldn't focus too much on it. Just so many activities that rely on people feeling comfortable, in a familiar, intimate atmosphere. You can't spoof that with a restaurant or an AirBNB. So even if the place would allow it, people would rarely be as comfortable.
Oh ok, I'm one of those people who do have such parties lol (though I'm normally the suspendee).
Funnily enough I have had parties outside with such aspects, there are actually venues that specialise in such things. Friends regular rent them out. Usually combined with finger food only though.
An Airbnb or Kinkbnb would suffice for that use case. I don't need a kitchen with two ovens for most of the year but when I'm hosting a large party, having the option of a kitchen of that grade is nice.
Different people have different incentive structures. Owning or having access to private property is highly appealing. Its more economical and convenient to buy than rent for some things, and until prices and transactional friction decrease this will not change.
You keep missing the point. People don’t go to visit a conference center but _me_. Yes I can go to an event but when it’s done to do private stuff (going to events for themselves is quite different) it really is just a substitute.
And you’re exaggerating the cost too. Two ovens? Seriously have you seen a Polish Christmas dinner? Dozen people, dozen meals, one stove/oven combo. It’s normal stuff done by normal people with small flats.
I mean, you're not wrong in general - if someone if sacrificing something they actually want (travel vacay) for something they only want the story of (hosting dinner parties) - then yeah.
But in specific, goddamn there's so many differences between hosting a dinner party at home vs at a restaurant, or getting someone to visit and putting them up in a room vs a hotel.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food.
This is borderline infuriating. To suggest that a day with the extended family, which might include people from three different generations, at home could ever be replaced with two hours at a restaurant.
I know there are significant cultural differences at stake here but if your party with family/friends at a restaurant only takes two hours, you're doing it wrong.
"But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen."
That just not true. Restaurant quality has plummeted and it's easy to out cook them. Go to your average fancy wedding and the food is mediocre (this summer I went to a wedding in Canada's fanciest hotel. Same "fancy" fare you get anywhere else).
By the time your guests arrive, if you're spending your time in the kitchen instead of entertaining, you've messed up.
Also, you're telling OP how to live his life. You'd hate it if someone told you how to live yours.
"And for hosting occasional guests an extra bedroom, plenty of solutions exist for creating temporary sleeping space in the living room, while leaving your own bedroom to the guests. A small inconvenience to pay to save out a whole bedroom to pay for and maintain. There’s also the option of going on vacation together, which can be a really fun way to spend the holidays."
The carbon cost of vacations is not zero. Close the ducts to the extra room and maintaining it is essentially free.
But again, you're telling OP how to live. You do your vacations with friends, I'll invite my in-laws to stay with me for a year.
"Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead."
And the detritus afterwards? Since I don't have a truck Ive been slowly cleaning my yard one green bin a week at a time since moving in two years ago. With a pickup I could have finished in two weekends.
Your travel is not environmentally sound at all. Sure, a plane gets 100 mpgp, if its full, but the distances are massive and its way worse overall.
But that's your life, you can choose to do that if you want. I care too much for the environment to air travel much (and, as a "third culture kid" -yuck- I actually do have friends and family scattered through out the world).
"My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution. I see so many people maxing out their house and car within their budget, and then talking about but never doing things they really want to, like that far away vacation, or that expensive hobby. I never quite understand why."
You don't have to understand. Ppl like to bitch. They would have even if their choices were different. That is a message of basically all religions throughout time - be content with your now.
> Still, these replies show how spoiled, individualistic and entitled people are.
Are you living in a cave? Do you have children? Do you own a car? Do you fly anywhere? Are you sure your house has no glass walls before you throw rocks?
> Still, these replies show how spoiled, individualistic and entitled people are.
There is no flaw or entitlement doing whatever makes you happy. And there's nothing individualistic about not liking public transport (if you have access to it).
The whole glass ceilings concept is absurd: just because someone's situation isn't perfect doesn't mean we don't all benefit from pointing out flaws in a given system.
Who are you to decide what is better for the collectivity? You just decided on different tradeoffs. Should I link the amount of slavery that exists in EV supply chains? Everything has downsides and upsides and things change over time.
We're talking about how those things are impossible to do without a gas car. Half the thread is stumped about how one might go about such things without one.
Well, because the electric cars are not on par with gas ones.
You're also missing the point about how much it pollutes to make one car battery. There was a YT video a while back and you break even pollution wise at about 60-70k miles - basically your fancy electric car is pre-polluted. The only advantage over a gas car is the feel good sentiment.
The other advantage is environmental responsibility.
The pre-pollution you speak of is a myth, because after one year of use the total pollution crosses over in favor of the electric car. Even if the electricity is sourced from the worst source, coal burning, the net result is still a win for electric because electric drive trains use energy so much more efficiently than gas.
Even if it is pre-polluted, you can outsource the pollution to remote areas where the factories and electricity plants are instead of fuming around dense cities where the population lives.
... because winds are static and the greenhouse just affects the area where the pollution is created. And what about the people living there, aren't they entitled to some fresh air? And for the record, the areas are not that remote to local population centers.
The main point about climate change and everything is that you can't play ostrich and if you don't see happening it means you're gonna be ok. If the US pollutes too much (for example's sake) and the ice shelf at the North pole melts, you're gonna feel it all over the world because the water will rise equally.
Negative health effects to large populations of city dwellers PLUS global environment impact or outsourced pollution to remote areas PLUS same global impact?
It does, and it is not only greenhouse gasses but particles like soot, NOx, you don't need to tell me further. Go see how sooty old stone house walls look like in Italy or UK with all the personal diesel cars driving around.
> If the US pollutes too much (for example's sake) and the ice shelf at the North pole melts, you're gonna feel it all over the world because the water will rise equally.
"If the US pollutes too much", droughts and other rare-ish weather events in South America, Africa and South Asia will displace more people and lead to more instability. That's a much more tangible threat in our lifetimes...
No, sorry for the misunderstanding, I was referring to the comment I replied to: sharing more things is simply more efficient on used resources.
I agree with you on the supply chain of EVs... in particular if we're talking about electric cars which are extremely wasteful compared to smaller vehicles and public transit.
In the suburban US, nothing is 15km away. All of the stores you typically go to are 0-5 miles way (grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, doctor, etc.). It is a very convenient place to live and people who want a to live in a house love suburbia because it is affordable, safe, and in general a nice place to live.
People living in rural America have to drive a lot farther than suburbanites.
Also, note that people who prefer to not own a car can choose to live in places with good public transit (mostly big cities like Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Boston, Philidelphia, etc.).
> The 15-minute city (FMC or 15mC[2][3][4][5][6][7]) is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city.
Roughly 20mph on an electric bike, in 15mn I believe you do roughly 5 miles?
20mph is hauling it on a bicycle. A normal cruising speed on a bike is more like 12-15mph. So that's more like 3.75mi.
But yes, for all the suburbs I've lived in I've had the choice of dozens+ of restaurants, a few grocers, various stores, office parks, and more within 5mi. There's definitely places where this isn't true but it's not like all suburbs take two miles to leave the pure houses neighborhood.
No one claimed that the average suburban "Main St" is going to compare to high-density urban planning, but that suburban shopping options generally offer choices for most daily shopping needs within a reasonable (1-8km) distance independent from the city hub they're next to.
> No one claimed that the average suburban "Main St" is going to compare to high-density urban planning
You did. Dense cities are struggling to implement the 15mn trip to any amenities. Yet you are claiming that everything is in a range of 8km from the average house in an American suburb, that roughly 15mn on an e-bike.
>> a choice of restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, etc.
You started this with a nonsense statement that suburban American's were somehow 15km away from the nearest shop, which you were corrected on. Then you decided to be pedantic about the reply so you nitpicked the fact the author didn't include restaurants or bars. Then when I corrected that, you decided to move the goal posts to suburbs being 15 minute cities. Now you've decided to triple-down rather than acknowledge maybe your understanding is flawed.
> Yet you are claiming that everything is in a range of 8km
No one said "everything", but "most shopping options". You don't seem actually interested on having an honest conversation rather than pushing a distorted view of American suburbs of which you don't seem to have any 1st hand experience.
In the conventional american city everything is 20 minutes away. Nothing is truly inconvenient, but nowhere has that glorious vibe of effortless living either. In the burbs, every errand is alright, but it's also low key demeaning.
> In the suburban US, nothing is 15km away. All of the stores you typically go to are 0-5 miles way (grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, doctor, etc.).
Then why are people using cars so much if everything is at a walking distance?
Because the roads are dangerous to cross on foot, and the footpaths stop suddenly for no apparent reason. And there's no AC outside, which matters more in some parts of the USA than others (Davis (CA) and Salt Lake City are above my comfort threshold, from memory).
For example, one time I stayed at the The Cupertino Hotel in CA and tried walking to One Infinite Loop, a junction which every sufficiently old iOS user will be familiar with because it's what Apple used to use as the icon for their Maps app before they relocated their HQ to the flying saucer campus. The junction looks like this, and was an awful experience as a pedestrian:
Other than the high annual death toll and millions of life-changing injuries annually, lowered health, significant impact on household income, and pollution, you mean?
And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
Meantime, you could adopt some driving-analog version of the following approach, but don't expect most of us to do so:
"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts." --Spaf
> And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
This is only true for one of them and self-driving is still a long ways off. A self-driving EV still produces a lot of pollution (more than half of the CO2 is during manufacturing, and tire dust isn’t improved), costs a lot, and requires significant amounts of space to store and operate.
Nobody is saying there aren’t utility benefits but we shouldn’t continue massively subsidizing something while ignoring all of the problems. That’s why your analogy is nonsensical: spaf and the rest of the community didn’t say “perfect security is impossible, guess we shouldn’t do anything until AGI solves it for us!” and go to the bar.
> And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
Nope.
In term of general health, on average people will still lower their life expectancy every time they use a self driving vehicle instead of riding your bicycle or walking for the same short trip.
Plus the horror in term of land management and the general effect it has on psych.
Me? Well, the Americans don't let me vote, what with being British and living in Berlin (the original, not any of the 26 places of the same name in the USA), so the best I can do is point out to any Americans who feel like listening that there are better ways to design cities than the ways they've grown up with, and that "15 minute cities" are not the dystopian conspiracy theories that some seem to fear they are.
Beyond all the safety stuff, it's also because that car often saves a huge amount of time compared to walking/biking - especially when there are multiple stops involved in an outing.
And that car can haul groceries, etc. much better than a bike or hands can. I have a grocery store well within walking distance of me (on safe-ish sidewalks even), but I only walk when I only have a few things to pick up because otherwise I'm trying to haul 50lb of fragile and bulky stuff back half a mile to my house by hand (I also tend to go there mostly while I'm already out doing other things, so the marginal additional mileage is nearly zero). Yes, I could take the approach of going to the grocery store every day, but I flat out don't have the time for that (or the weather for that!). Or I could take the approach of buying a much nicer bike with more hauling capacity, but I already have a car (and do enough with it that there's no reasonable way to go without one) so I'm not going to spend $2k on a bike that would only reduce my mileage by 100 miles a year. Heck...just the savings from fixing things DIY covers the cost of my car in a typical year (I have an old house!), not to mention the car rental fees I'd incur for trips pretty much anywhere outside of a 5-10 mile radius.
But to your point, this is also highly situational. If I were in an apartment in NYC, that's a completely different situation than being in a house in a small-size city (honestly, my city in the US even has public transport that nearly rivals comparable cities in Europe...but they key there is comparing to comparable cities in Europe...where everyone still has cars because to go anywhere outside of a small radius, they need a car).
Because the infrastructure is designed such that it's not safe to do otherwise, and anything but driving is an afterthought. I have a shopping center just over a mile away from me but I'd be putting my life at risk walking or biking there.
I would love to be able to bike there safely. Wouldn't even take much longer than driving.
> It (suburbia) is a very convenient place to live
I just wanted to point out that this is missed on a lot of people. City planners in suburbs have come a long way, at least in DFW they have. I live in Oak Cliff which is about 3 miles S/SW of downtown Dallas. The northern suburbs of DFW such as Frisco are not the traditional boring/bland bedroom communities that get associated with suburbs. Well, there is that element but there are many good jobs, good restaurants/entertainment, and other amenities traditionally associated with city centers in the suburbs these days.
I suggest spending some times in a growing a suburb with an open mind. If you're a city person it's not likely to amaze you but it's not that bad either.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Well said. And I think that you cut to the heart of what the electric vehicle advocates are doing wrong. They are telling us the only times we actually enjoy being in the car and travelling are the ones we should give up.
I don’t use a car in the city. An electric car can’t yet take me home in 2 days without perfect conditions and a tailored root.
As an ordinary driver, I cannot care less whether a car is electric or not. All I want is *A* car can cover all most if not all my needs around transport. Obviously those electric car advocate took what we *want* as what we *need*.
Oh those duplicitous monsters! Unlike those sincere marketing folks that spend their lives manipulating the multitudes over what their needs and wants are!
I wholeheartedly agree and am also going to bring another thing up that ICE cars have but EVs don't regarding range:
Peace of mind.
When we're driving an ICE car, we simply don't care about the range. We don't think about it; it's not a concern. That peace of mind is fucking priceless, especially if one's life is already busy with far more pressing concerns.
In an EV we have to constantly keep an eye on that battery level, on that Miles Remaining counter. We have to micromanage the A/C and other things that consume power. That is mentally draining, and for what? It's something we don't have to care about in an ICE car.
I drove an EV, I constantly worried about the range. Range was constantly on my mind, even when I wasn't driving the fucking thing. It was mentally fucking exhausting. Sincerely: No thanks.
I'll happily pay the $50~70 bucks at the gas station to fill up my car in a few minutes and be at peace. It easily beats paying almost nothing charging overnight and then worrying if I can come back home when I start another day.
I've not driven an EV, so I can't speak to that. But I have been in an ICE car that has run out of petrol (it was truly sitcom-worthy, with the infamous line "Don't worry, it always shows empty when it's got a 1/4 of a tank left" about a minute before the engine died), and this wasn't that far out from Sydney, and there are signs around here (east coast of AU) with how many km/minutes the next fuel stop is after the current one, so I'm not convinced that EV range concerns can't be managed in a similar way.
They're usually managed even better. (Some) EVs are pretty good at estimating actual range and can automatically tell the driver where the nearest charging points are.
The really good ones can also check if there are free slots in the chargers and optimise accordingly.
Eh, given the same set of parameters, I have trouble believing a driver who let an ICE car get that low on petrol would've taken the steps necessary to manage the battery charge for that trip.
Also, the fuel consumption of an ICE is going to be much more consistent and predictable especially later in it's service life.
The missing context (which I skipped) was that they had two identical(ish, I couldn't tell the difference, they were the same model though) cars, and the other one did have that behaviour (having witnessed it), I suspect the cause was confusion about which car the different members of the family were using that day. It was also on the way back (so no-one was that stressed about it), so waiting to get back to Sydney would have given much cheaper petrol (NRMA came and gave us enough to get back out of the mountains after 30m).
I think this depends a lot on the EV infrastructure around you.
Driving an EV in the SF Bay Area is super convenient -- I know all the chargers off the top of my head and maintaining enough range is second nature to me now. I regularly road trip my Model 3 as well without any issues. I don't even look at the miles, just battery %.
I recently got an ICE car for fun on the weekends and thinking about gas, oil changes, preventative maintenance, and repairs has been way more stressful than charging.
Give the infrastructure a few years to catch up. Now that NACS has taken over in the US, things will only get better.
Infrastructure is there, people just have a fixed notion of what the infrastructure looks like.
Even our least populated states are littered with fast chargers alone highways and interstates.
When I bought my model 3 in 2018, infrastructure was good enough in Idaho the meet my needs, though there were a few tight gaps.
Now in 2024 the picture has dramatically changed with every route having excess charge capacity and options.
Those down on EVs are having to come up with ever more convoluted scenarios and routes to justify why they aren't feasible. I literally saw one where a person posited they needed to drive from Edmonton to Winnipeg Canada every day during the winter and because an EV is a bad fit for that situation it's a bad fit for everyone.
If you've been raised in a deeply individualistic culture, the collective well-being doesn't affect your peace of mind. And if you can afford to choose to own an EV, you and your descendants will likely be amongst the least impacted by climate change, migrations, and supply chain disruptions.
Hah, so true. If you give up on your ICE now in one of the western democracies, it will be sold as a used car in your country first and continue being driven around by someone poorer, then eventually be shipped to Asia and be driven around there by even poorer people until it eventually goes to Africa and and be driven until it finally gives out. Getting a new EV and dumping the ICE won't change much on that in the short term.
So what I want to say is, that poor people have better things to worry about than EVs and sustainability, like getting through the day with food on their plate and maybe a roof over their head. While they will be the most impacted, they can afford to care about it the least.
Also, EVs right now just shift the problem around until we manage to produce electricity from renewable sources, which is still some way off, especially in the poor places that will drive the least efficient ICEs while they last.
In France we have a "bonus for scrapyard" to avoid that [1]. You get an extra discount if you prove that the old car you're replacing is going to be removed from the road.
I don't think it's well thought through given how broken the rating of cars is, but that's a step in the right direction I guess.
> Also, EVs right now just shift the problem around until we manage to produce electricity from renewable sources
Until we manage to actually reduce the amount of cars. The solution for transportation is quite clearly less and smaller vehicles, all EVs.
If you are broke you can buy a normal car for $1000 or less, that can get you to work and back home. You can't afford to live where you can take public transit or a bicycle to work. Electric is simply not an option for the majority of people, it is a luxury. Until a worker can get an electric car for a couple of thousands, no scrapyard bonus will make any difference whatsoever. It's just more tax money subsidies for rich people.
>Until we manage to actually reduce the amount of cars. The solution for transportation is quite clearly less and smaller vehicles, all EVs.
That's called a motorcycle, although they're not electric. There's a few hundred million of them already in the world, and greater adaption of motorcycles where possible would be incredible for reduced traffic and reduced pollution. On top of that they are cheap, fuel efficient and fun to ride. But nobody will listen to the solution, because there is too much money to be made from the problem.
Good to know, I had no idea of that! But it seems to be fixed with a cat without too much downside in performance. From my quick research, it seems that most modern motorcycles do have cats, and they don't add very much to the price of the vehicle.
Cars carry more people, and more stuff. And it protects you from the weather. But if you're just transporting yourself or yourself and a passenger, the motorcycle can be a good option many times.
Thanks, good to know they have “cats” too, didn’t know that. Hopefully it helps a lot. For the record, I assume what I’ve heard about motorcycles does not account for that.
> Electric is simply not an option for the majority of people, it is a luxury. Until a worker can get an electric car for a couple of thousands, no scrapyard bonus will make any difference whatsoever. It's just more tax money subsidies for rich people.
Note that "the majority of people" don't have a car, they have 2-wheeled vehicle at best. [1] I'm not conflating "electric vehicles" with "electric cars".
> That's called a motorcycle, although they're not electric.
No shit.
> There's a few hundred million of them already in the world, and greater adaption of motorcycles where possible would be incredible for reduced traffic and reduced pollution. On top of that they are cheap, fuel efficient and fun to ride. But nobody will listen to the solution, because there is a too much money to be made from the problem.
Fully agree, even though the maximum amount of public transportation is in my opinion desirable in areas that permit it.
> I'm not conflating "electric vehicles" with "electric cars".
My mistake!
To add a bit more to the discussion. Larger adaption of motorcycles instead of cars in cities can also reduce the pollution from public transport. Nothing spews more exhaust than a bus stuck in traffic. Motorcycles are also a good complement to public transit, since you can get to a station or terminal that is far away on your motorcycle and easily park there. Car parking needs much more space. In many cases it is better to get to a terminal that has express public transport by your own means, so that you don't have to live by the local bus schedule and wait for the slow route to the terminal.
Good point for the buses, I wonder which is more energy-efficient in-between putting all passengers in a battery-electric bus or on electric scooters.
The main advantage I see to electric motorcycles is that you barely need to change anything in most car-dependant areas to start mass adoption. They are fast enough for you to not feel unsafe next to cars at a red light, and can go quite far on a single charge.
I've been raving about Taiwan's Gogoros for a while, but still, too many motorcycles is a big safety hazard. Electric bicycles are much better in that regard, muscle ones even more.
I think both ICE and electric motorcycles will be more energy-efficient than both ICE buses and electric buses. But not everybody can ride a motorcycle, so my thought is that if more car drivers became motorcycle riders, then traffic would flow much better and the bus wouldn't get stuck in the first place.
It would also save a lot of money on infrastructure, if traffic could be improved without having to build larger and larger highways.
As for electric and muscle bicycles, I think they have their time and place. There's nothing wrong with people combining all methods of transportation in their life, depending on circumstances and weather. Car + MC + Bicycle could be in everybody's garage.
I wouldn't consider many motorcycles a safety hazard. It's mostly people riding like lunatics. And safety gear has become better recently, with airbag clothes. At least bikers only hurt themselves in an accident. In my experience motorcycles are safer than electric bicycles, unless you're in a place with very good bicycle infrastructure. Motorcycles can accelerate out of dangerous situations and have better manoeuvrability than large-wheeled bicycles.
> If you've been raised in a deeply individualistic culture, the collective well-being doesn't affect your peace of mind.
I don't know about that. It certainly affects mine. I may not be representative of the average person in my culture, but I was a product of my culture regardless.
As an aside, you can get a Model 3 for less than a Toyota Corolla now in many states so the “if you can afford an EV” perspective is starting to lose its edge. However I still agree with your overall point.
Tragedy of the commons. Your decision to abandon ICE car will not change anything in the grand scheme of things besides inconveniencing you so long as other people are allowed to use ICE cars and a myriad of other fossil fuel based conveniences.
If you're not using a train you're burning the only inhabitable planet as well. So stop feeling superior to others while doing the same crap they all do.
The point is that people are VERY worried about the working conditions of alleged children in lithium mines and battery recycling. (Child labour is used in _illegal_ mines, batteries can be recycled with 95% efficiency)
All the while the same people drive ICE vehicles and contribute to the insane amount of environmental destruction caused by oil drilling and transportation. But they don't go commenting on every new ICE vehicle article saying "But what about the Exxon Valdez, what about the birds covered in oil?"
This integration didn’t exist when the EV versions were just electrified versions of ICE cars.
This changed with the upcoming of car by traditional automakers that were designed to be an BEV first. I’ve used the route planning in a Kia EV as well as a VW EV without any issues. You can plan your route with charging points, select the desired remaining capacity, select the kind of charging you want, etc. AFAIK Porsche offers the same features too
My Renault Megane E-tech will tell me the battery % when I reach my destination, and will ask me to add a charging stop on the way if I won't make it. My previous BMW i3 did the same.
Range anxiety is a short term condition, you get over it after surprisingly quickly. Then you just enjoy driving as normal. Managing charging is easy once you get used to it (in Europe, at least). Actual owners of modern EVs do not micromanage like you claim, you just don't need to.
Personally I prefer paying almost nothing (in fuel) for a nicer drive with far less maintenance worries.
> Range anxiety is a short term condition, you get over it after surprisingly quickly.
My partner has had a series of EVs for 10 years now.
Just a few weeks ago dropped me off at the airport (~100 mile roundtrip) and started planning for it days it advance. How much needed to driver on day N-2, N-1, how much charge would be left. Then spent the morning of the trip sipping coffee at Whole Foods to bring the charge up to %100 (normally limited to %80). Then spent the whole trip hyperfocused on the mileage remaining, worried about getting home.
While the trip is quite a bit shorter than the advertised range, with hilly terrain it's always uncertain what the real world mileage ends up being.
It all seemed very exhausting. So I guess it takes more than a decade to get over range anxiety.
If you are hitting 100 miles range, then you do indeed have such a small range you need to hyperfocus. A modern Y or 3 will always do 200 miles without a threat. I charge to 70%, and I wouldn't even top up before doing a 100 mile rountrip.
Which goes back to.. more range REALLY DOES help. 100 vs 200 miles range is game cahnging. 200 to 300 would be huge for road trips. 400, 500, starts to hit some diminishing but non-zero returns.
Both of these look like very dependent on the personal situation. In my case I never really got over the winter induced anxiety (the range dropped severely for my expectations), combined with the lack of home charger, combined with high electricity costs, combined with the fact that I can walk, cycle, or take public transport for most of my needs. I eventually returned to a cheap, small, ICE car that I use occasionally but serves for peace of mind (it's there!) and makes me just as comfortable as an EV makes you. I wouldn't recommend to you a bicycle or even a small car because it's very important not to generalize to others based on my needs.
Did you have a heat pump? Did you have a car with 300 miles of summer range? The situation these days is far better than what it was but the infrastructure is still catching up to support those without home charging. That does make it more effort, I do not deny (I did it for a bit).
Of course all transport ownership is dependent on personal situation. That really goes without saying, just look out the window! I didn't recommend anything, to do so would be daft.
I simply do not believe range anxiety is still the problem it once was.
I gave it up and switched back in November 2022. While I always keep my options open and an eye out for what makes sense for me, I haven't seen any signs that the situation is radically different in general. It certainly hasn't changed for me personally.
> I simply do not believe range anxiety is still the problem it once was.
Maybe but that says very little. If your waiter told they don't believe the soup contains anywhere near the amount of spit it once did you wouldn't feel encouraged. I'm happy if the situation is improving and if I still care about owning a car in the future I'll surely reassess if that critical threshold was reached. Anything short of that will get a "very good, keep up the good work" but not my money.
Agreed. I've driven an EV for over 4 years and range anxiety vanished after the first few months. I live in a city with good charging options, but often have to take longer road trips to see aging parents who live in a very rural area with zero fast chargers for miles around. Yes, I need to do a top-up charge on the way down because I know I can't charge when I get there, but I'd likely have to do that in an ICE car because there are no petrol stations near them either!
I pay about 15% of what I would have previously paid for diesel, and the only maintenance I've had to do was a new tyre after running over a nail.
Hah, if only you've seen me in my ICE car.
Plenty of hoping and praying the glimmering fuel light doesn't die out and that I'll make it to the fuel station.
No peace mind of mind.
When my ICE car is getting low on fuel, which happens quite often because the tank isn't that big and I tend to avoid filling up when the prices are high (they vary a lot here), I also have to micromanage the A/C and anything else, because they consume just as much energy as they do in an EV car, and that comes from the gasoline. It's most definitely not something I "don't have to care about". It's actually more of a concern because when my car is low on fuel it's very hard to know exactly how much is left - is it half a liter, two, or three? There are way fewer fueling stations than in the past, so getting there also takes fuel. At least with an EV I could have charged at home or at work or at the shopping mall.. well, I'll stay with my ICE car for a while more but that's because there are other good things about it which aren't yet available for EVs, but I do wish it was an EV.
This is purely your behaviour though, the more general case is that most people dont have to micromanage their ICE vehicles or be concerned about range. Especially in the case where they are doing extended driving trips where even fuel can be scarce jerry cans are easy enough to pack.
But my point was that A/C and all electric appliances also affect fuel consumption of ICE cars, and if, for any reason, you're low on fuel you have to take that as much into consideration as with an EV car (except that it's often much harder to gauge how much you have left, with an ICE car).
That's probably true in the US. Not around here, in a semi-populated region of Europe. It's far shorter to somewhere to charge than it is to a gas station. There used to be lots of them, but they started to disappear even before EVs were a thing. For me the nearest one is quite a bit away, through a toll booth even.
If you provided that context, you would not have gotten such incredulous replies. Btw the US isn't special. I'm in India right now and there's a petrol station around every corner just like there's a gas station around every corner back home
I assure you that this is not normal behavior. Furthermore, why would you consider paying more ($10k to $20K more!)[0] for an EV if you're trying to time the market on gas prices and worried about spending a few cents on running the A/C?
That was not my point at all, the point was that, unlike what was implied in what I commented on, usage of A/C and appliances don't matter for ICE cars, which is not at all true. Energy use is just as for EV cars and has to be taken into consideration. In any case, pricing is different in various places - I own an ICE car, and I have always bought low cost, used cars. That place doesn't currently exist in the EV market.
There's an alternative though, at least for those who need an everyday car with low range and do big trips in rare occasions: renting a car when needed.
So it's part of the cost. Most people travelling long distance fly and rent a car at the far end.
Would you pay an extra $500 a month to avoid having to spend $1000 renting a car twice a year? Probably not, so the question is how much more does it cost to not rent the long distance car.
And I've never rented a car where a 1mm scratch would require fixing, nor a 1cm scratch
Bumper Damage IS: Dent/scratch larger than 6” (size of the damage evaluator), or hole/tear of any size
Exterior Body Damage (Non-Bumper) IS: dent/scratch larger than 2” circle, or hole/tear of any size
Glass Damage IS: Any ‘Star’/crack
I suspect companies like Europcar, Hertz etc would be similar.
I’m Italian, emigrated to the Netherlands and happily car-free.
Ever since Covid happened we rent one for 1 month a year in summer and drive to my in-laws, and further down in central Italy. Overall clocking ~3.5-4k km.
We rented all types, ICE, hybrid and BEV with no noticeable difference: while with the Model Y we had to stop N times to fast-charges and a snack, with the ICE we’d stop anyway to rest, drink or use the toilet even on a half-tank.
Range anxiety is a thing, but it’s over after a couple days.
It’s a solved problem in the US at least, as long as the car you buy comes from a manufacturer with a good fast charging network, of which there is currently exactly one. Australia is well on its way to being solved for most trips.
Even if we swapped every ice vehicle for electric and had the charging infrastructure in place, we wouldnt leave all that oil in the ground. Its just to useful, it would be used for plastics, chemical feedstocks, fertilizers, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, etc... All those hydrogen carbon bond we dont have to pay the energy for are just to danm useful and valuable for so many industries to leave in the ground.
NL, hai letto bene. I don’t know what to make of this statement though.
I’ve clearly accounted for everything dude, including my own endurance and that of my family: every couple hours we need to get out, stretch, have a coffee and use the toilet. Plugging a DC 150kW takes 2 minutes, and we were never stuck in a queue waiting for that.
In any case the worse time wasters are roadworks and traffic jams on the German highways and the abysmal wait at the Gotthard Tunnel. If not for them I could easily make it in one day with a Model Y
Hotels can have electrical outlets. Not to mention chargers which are often faster than electrical outlets. Long trips in huge countries are easy peasy. Charging stops are like 10 minutes every couple hours and sometimes 20 when someone goes in a store for a few minutes. The long charging stops you are thinking of are non-Teslas.
I like how you completely forgot that a night at a hotel costs you 1 day of vacation, plus the cost for the hotel itself.
Most healthy people don't need toilet breaks every 2h, and you're not accounting for the line at charging spots. 10 minutes * 5 cars isn't a short stop really.
There are no lines though. And you are making things up. There is no need for a hotel. As an example, a recent long trip I took in a BEV (Tesla) was 1442 km in one day. No hotel needed. How is that a bad thing? Are you going to tell me that is a short distance?
Have you tried going to the mountains in France? Or anywhere not on the main roads, even? I mean actually traveling around, not just taking the highway across.
My ICE motorbike has a range of around 300 km on the highway, around 200 in the mountains if I'm enjoying myself. I've had range anxiety with it to the point I now cart around extra gas. None of the gas stations I visited had any kind of charging available (outside your regular outlet, but it's unlikely the attendant will let you hook up your car to the outlet inside the office – if it's even open).
Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.
> Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.
Sure, but keep in mind that bikers riding on the rolling hills of the French countryside are a significantly smaller demography than the millions driving across the highway infrastructure.
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.
The feeling I get whenever these discussions come up is that there's a distinct lack of nuance, and a tendency to shove a one-size-fits-all solution down peoples' throats, even though the solution might only fit-most. I get that it's easier to reason with absolutes, and that sometimes some people may need a nudge to take the jump. But I also understand being pushed like this with no apparent concern for peoples' situations can make them close down to the argument, even if it could actually make sense for them in the end.
People complaining about range anxiety are usually told "nah man, it's just FUD!" Maybe it is just FUD even for a sizable portion of those complaining, but just dismissing their concerns out of hand doesn't seem like a good approach.
And this isn't just a bunch of people on a random discussion board. It's actual policies being enacted affecting peoples' actual lives.
Talking about France, in a few years' time my motorbike won't be allowed inside Paris (where I live). I rarely use it. I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment. Especially given that the newer model which complies with the current pollution standards consumes the same amount of gas as mine (judging by the manufacturer's specs). Of course, this law is stupid because it only considers the year the vehicle was sold, but it's just one example of many why people may have a knee-jerk reaction to being forcibly pushed to adopt new things.
This year we visited the Dolomites and the weather was insane. The place was full of old photo's of meters high snowfalls but all they got this year was a couple centimeters in early December. We need to change our habits, this pace is unsustainable
So you're saying that trashing a perfectly good bike and building another one, only to be ridden what? 10000 km at most a year, is a good deal for the environment? And consume the same amount of gas, so put out the same amount of CO2? My bike was an example where the general one-size-fits-all solution is actually counter-productive.
This is exactly the issue I'm talking about.
I'm all for preserving the environment, I really am. And I think that moving the immense majority of (sub-)urban commuters from ICE to EV is great and will make a difference. Or, even better: stop commuting if possible!
Isn't the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle", "in that order"? How are we reducing or even reusing here?
But this whole "replace all ICE vehicles now" just screams of disguised "won't somebody think of the economy?"
Electric is quieter, so many people you probably would never even notice or be aware of, who are out there seeking a peaceful direct experience of the mountains, will appreciate the absence of your motorcycle in that respect.
Also you make a common mistake of motorcycle owners in equating the amount of gas consumed with the amount of pollution. Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.
Which is saying something even worse than saying their per-litre pollution is bad since motorcycles get more kilometers per litre. In other words even with their better per-kilometer gas usage, they still pollute more per unit of distance travelled. That is truly bad, from a pollution perspective. It’s a mistake to think the small amount of gas used means there is less impact.
I would also love being able to ride a quiet motorbike. One of the reasons I have my specific model is that it's very quiet. I'm not against EV bikes, mind. I'm talking about practical issues, here, and saying that as of today, electric bikes' range combined with the existing infrastructure would have a hard time replacing ICE bikes.
I'm all for your considering that I shouldn't get to enjoy the mountains, but please, come out and say that, instead of dancing around the subject and saying that a newer ICE bike would be just fine. The argument just loses credibilty.
> Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.
How small are we talking, here? My motorbike's engine is bigger than many modern ICE cars' (I'm in Europe, so big-ass V8s aren't that common).
Be that as it may, you seem to ignore what I'd say is the most important part of my argument: I'm not complaining that I wouldn't be allowed to ride any bike. I'm complaining that the powers that be figured that a newer bike, with the same weight and similar sized engine (smaller, actually! – so more polluting?) and the same gas consumption is somehow better than my older model, and I should be allowed to ride that and not the one I already have.
Yeah I see what you're saying, it would suck if they forced you to change over abruptly. And if you have a bigger engine as you say the pollution is probably less of an issue. In any case the pollution picture is getting massively better as EVs roll out and I'm guessing the transition period will be long (as long as the lifetime of your current bike, maybe).
Then one would hope we will have swappable battery pack options for motorcycles in the future as well, which could make refueling more widespread. Easier to do for motorcycles than cars. And with a smaller battery by necessity, swapping makes more sense. Anyway I'm just rambling on here, who knows what will happen.
As far as you getting to enjoy the mountains, I had (maybe mistakenly) been thinking you were talking about a dirt bike, versus a road bike. I don't think of the sound of road bikes as annoying to anyone, especially a quiet one. Not quite as Edward Abbey would say, "if there's a road there, the place is already ruined" but definitely you get more leeway to make noise on a road.
> Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.
The situation you described is purely recreative. Others might argue that the climate is much more important than the personal hobby of a few motorcyclists and would warrant banning ICE vehicles altogether.
One can change recreational activities easily.
> I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment.
I am with you on that one and I believe that if all this wasn't an hypocritical way to save the automotive industry, the governments would push and force car brands to develop and sell homologated EV conversion kits for all cars builds in the last 30 years.
The endless focus on hobbies involving ICE misses the forest for the trees and has pitted tons of large hobby communities against environmentalists for decades because many environmentalists would much rather pick a fight with car guys than with the inter-global corporations and the defense forces that actually make up most of the worldwide emissions pool.
International shipping is single-handedly the greatest contributor by a small margin, tons of which just does not need to happen, full stop. We send products around the entire world because it costs pennies less to package pineapple in one country than another, and most of it goes in the fucking garbage anyway. And the products that do require shipping could be done in a much, much more efficient manner to save tons and tons of ship traffic per year. The other major contributor is industry, which could be trimmed significantly if we put serious work into ending the production of stupid, useless, shitty items that no one actually wants (knockoff electronics, basically anything drop-shipped, single use fucking lithium phone chargers).
And all that's not even going into shit like the FIELDS of e-bikes and e-scooters being stacked in China because there's just nowhere to go with that.
Military dick-wagging especially but not solely by the United States accounts for absolute shit-tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere, too, absolutely none of which needs to happen. Military vehicles, construction vehicles, LTL trucks, service vehicles like garbage trucks: this is where we can make big dents in climate change. Not by taking away Jerry's Corvette that does, at best, 10k miles if he has a good year where he gets in a lot of track time. As far as I'm concerned this is just the "check your carbon footprint" garbage with extra steps: blaming consumers for the state of the environment while completely letting off the dozens of multi-national corporations actually holding the power and making the decisions that are collapsing the biosphere.
Certainly, but it's a matter of priorities. I recycle and minimize my consumption of useless goods, and all the rest. These are unambiguously good things to do. But at the same time, going after people for their recreational hobbies just because said hobbies are not something you find personal fulfillment in is shit activism when they are barely enough to be considered a rounding error in the larger problems of climate change.
If at some point in the far flung future, things like dirt bikes or even track monster race cars owned by folk turn out to be the biggest environmental problem, fine. Then we'll deal with it. But from my perspective we have an entire ocean of fish much bigger and far more worth frying first than them.
I felt compelled to mention the hobby vs need situation because it used to be one of my hobby too but I also acknowledged it wasn't necessarily a smart thing from my part.
Now despite still enjoying riding a motorbike I am doing more recreationnal cycling and only transportation focused motorbike riding[1]. I just embraced moving a but slower. Turns out that with a simple bicycle you can get way enough thrill in the downhills, and with much less risks. As an ex elite road cycling racer, I am no stranger to catching and overtaking cars and motorbikes descending mountain passes.
[1] I basically only ride my motorbike if I have my partner with me and I am going to a specific place we wouldn't be able to make it and back home within a time constraint.
Not the OP but I have been to the Pyrinees and Dolomites in my Model 3 and was perfectly fine. Many, maybe even most of the small villages had at the very least a 50kw charger somewhere on them, often at a hotel or supermarket. I don't think I've ever been further than 100km from a fast charger.
I agree with you as that's my reality as well, however the original article is about the US market so the discussion here is for a US context and for them, as far as I understand it, their infrastructure is a lot poorer so the concerns are far more justified.
95c/kwh at rapid chargers in Italy this summer, that's over €800 to recharge for your journey compared with petrol at €1.80, which would be about €400.
no man, 21€c/kwh at Tesla SC stations outside Italy, something x2 in the country. Besides, gasoline was outrageously priced last summer, an epic gouging.
Everywhere in Australia is far away. I'm actually pretty keen on getting a Plugin Hybrid for where I live, we often go on 400KM+ drives into national parks or into state forest areas that get more and more remote as things go on.
Should we structurally stick with ICEs in EU and the US because everything is far in the Australian Outback and for that once in a lifetime road trip in the US?
That's your choice, and it's fine, and I'm not going to criticise it, but just suggest that sometimes (not always, and depends on what you consider "better") it's possible to cater for both the day to day case and those edge cases better if you make your starting choices more around your day to day needs.
E.g. maybe your parents staying specifically in your house is too important for you to give up, but for those whose actual need might well be to want to spent holiday time or the occasional long weekend etc. with family or friends, many places you can finance a lot of trips and big fancy AirBnbs for all of you together for the savings from a smaller mortgage.
For some it might similarly be even more of a highlight to throw the parties in a lavish rented location or fancy restaurant (but again: it might not be; if part of your enjoyment is to host at your home, that's your choice).
Depending on how frequently you need that truck, you might be better of renting/signing up to a car-sharing service.
Sometimes people genuinely want to be able to handle the very specific edge case and that's fine. But often people also just haven't considered the cost of buying for the edge cases vs. the cost of renting on occasion and what it might allow.
I wouldn't want to suggest you shouldn't make decisions that takes your edge cases into account, but I find to me at least that there are often alternative ways of addressing edge cases than people's "defaults".
I don’t know how you calculate things but airbnb/hotel/rental car prices - are priced that it never makes sense I did calculations couple of times.
It only makes sense to rent something if you don’t have any of your own options.
Getting bigger mortgage and having your family once a year instead of paying for a hotel gets you ahead really quick.
TCO of a bigger car is not that much bigger to match having a smaller car and then renting out a bigger once in a while. Unless it is like once in 10 years.
Adding a room to my house where I live would add about $4k/year in mortgage costs. If you have your family staying over often, you'd easily exceed that in AirBnb's, sure. For me, my family is a 2 hours international flight away, so they're around rarely enough that $4k exceeds what I spend. The point is not that this is always the right choice, but that you should do the maths for your specific circumstances before you decide.
Similarly, with respect to a car, if the only alternative was a smaller car maybe I'd have chosen that, but my average total transport costs over the last 10 years is about 1/10th of the average UK car costs when factoring in occasional months with hundreds spent on Uber. That works for me, because I live somewhere with excellent public transport and don't need to use even that much. It won't work for someone who don't have my life or my transport options. That's fine.
That was my entire point: Do the numbers. And that also includes for people who think they're saving by holding back.
It's also critical to remember in this discussion that that $4K is not gone. Generally speaking, you'll pay less in mortgage costs than the value of the house by the time the mortgage is paid off. That means that you benefit from both the option to host people and the added equity which you could release later in life if you need that cash, or you can leave for your descendents.
At least, as a rule of thumb, property value gains tend to exceed mortgage interest paid. It's not universally true, but generally you'll at least recoup a significant proportion of what you paid.
That's true, but most places you need to spend fairly close to the full mortgage cost not to get a better return if you're able to put even a small proportion of the cost increase in an index fund. It's worth taking into account, but if you do, you should also take into account whether the other option will leave you money left over and if so how you'll spend or invest that.
> Across the country's 35 largest metro areas, homes that boast of a formal dining room ask a median of $325 500, 23% more than the national median home price[0]
I didn't find specifically the median house price, but reversing the 23% increase puts the median at $265 000.
This suggests a median 'dollar value difference' from adding a dining room of around $60 000.
With a median down payment of 13%[1], and an average interest rate of around 7%[2], you'll pay back around $550 000 over a thirty year mortgage[3].
In order to pay back less than $610 000 (i.e. the $60 000 value difference), the mortgage shouldn't exceed $293 000, leaving you with only $28 000 to build your dining room and come off better off at the end of the mortgage term.
Obviously if you can do better than the median rates, down payments, and values, then the maths changes, but on average, it looks like I might be wrong about you recouping the full amount you spend on adding a dining room.
> Adding a room to my house where I live would add about $4k/year in mortgage costs.
You can't compare that to an AirBib bill dollar for dollar. The money you give to AirBnb is gone forever. The money you pay in mortgage partially goes to your equity and may partially be a tax deduction.
It's tax deductable extremely few places (US and Norway are the only generous ones I'm aware of; I'm sure there are more, but it's not all that common) and decidedly not in the UK. And you're right the money I give to AirBnB is gone forever, so I do need to take that into account.
However there are other issues to take into account: 1) it's not a given the added value of a room will be as high as the cost of adding it, and it can severely prolong the time before you're in the black. E.g. my house is one of the largest on my street already, and that typically results in a lower return for adding additional space, 2) you need to also consider whether the cost to cover the needs you otherwise would meet by adding a room is met by more, the same or less than the amount adding the room adds to your mortgage payments. If it is less, then it takes fairly little less before you're able to increase your capital faster by putting the difference in an index fund at the point in time when most of your mortgage payments still go towards interest.
By all means, it can pay off to build, and odds are I in fact will add a room to my house over the coming year whether or not it will be profitable. I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just that it's worth doing the numbers and figuring out what actually works best for you (and, yes, that does include factoring in equity) and sometimes the right choice for you might not be what is financially most prudent anyway. But it's worth going into it having run the numbers.
I took great care to multiple times make clear that the choice is yours, that your needs might not be suited for this, and that whatever works for you is fine. Exactly what made you think I was implying the person to decide what works for you should be anyone but you?
We were wondering if we could drive to glacier national park in our BMW i4. There doesn’t seem to be any charging infrastructure outside Kalispell, so we are better off flying and renting an ICE car (Yellowstone or Grand Canyon doesn’t seem very possible yet either). Same with driving up to Alaska ATM, which maybe might be possible in 5 years but is impossible today unless you leverage slower charging at RV parks. They are unfortunate sacrifices, they definitely do matter.
Honest question - can you rent a car for the trip?
Whole my kids were growing up we had a big people-mover vehicle. They grew up, we stopped using it, send I sold it. Recently I had a group visit and we wanted to see the sights. I simply rented (a much more modern and nicer) people mover for a week. Renting local, away from the airport, was really cheap.
My daily drive is negligible. For road trips I'll just rent a car. I can also rent a truck if I need to carry stuff, or something with a towbar to drag stuff.
Being "cheap " 350 days a year leaves a big budget for renting the edge case.
I use an electric cargo bike. It's a really expensive one that cost almost $7000. You can get a perfectly usable one for less than half that price. I use it for what most people use their car for in 90% of their trips, including picking up 2 kids from daycare and school. And I use it year round, including days like today when it is -11 degrees C (12F).
I don't pay fuel. I don't pay insurance. I don't have to finance a car.
When I need to move something big or heavy I rent a full size van or a box truck for about $100 for the day. Most people pay more than that just for car insurance in a month. And then I get a vehicle that is exactly what I need, including a lift gate when suitable. I rent a nice sedan when picking up my in-laws at the airport and a big station wagon when going on holidays with the family.
And I'm still ahead thousands of dollars every year compared to the average car payment which is more than $500 per month even for a used car.
I don't drive, and instead spend what sometimes seems like a fortune on Uber. But in the UK the average monthly spend on a car is ~500GBP when include the amortized cost of the car itself.
Even when my son was swimming competitively and we had to Uber him around to 6 training sessions a week plus often competitions many miles away, I only briefly averaged 400GBP/month in total transport costs (though with the caveat that I work from home; had I commuted full time it'd have added ~200/month to get in to the centre of London, but then again I'd likely have spent that even if I had a car because commuting in to the centre with a car is a nightmare)
And I got to sit and relax and read or talk to my son or listen to music and not have to pay attention to the road.
I get that some enjoy the actual act of driving and/or driving a comfy, fancy car, but for many, it's a really expensive enjoyment and I suspect a lot of people have not considered just how much they could "paper over" edge cases and issues with public transport (yes, I know this is not a viable options for huge parts of the US) or choices like yours with Uber or rentals.
The 2 mile trip to my local train station typically used to cost ~6 pounds outside of surge pricing. I's gotten more expensive, so if I had to do it again now I'm sure it'd start adding up.
Most of his trips would be to local leisure centres within about a two mile radius that would have been walkable in 20m-40m if not for the lack of time to finish up work, get him ready after school etc.. Normally I'd prefer to walk, and that's a large part of the reason my transport costs are very low.
EDIT: Just checked my most recent few trips, and I paid 16 pounds for a trip Google Maps tells me is 7.4 miles driving distance, and 20 pounds for the return the same distance. The last few trips to my local station have been between 6.50 and 8 pounds, so definitely gone up.
You can get cheap car in UK for like 2000GBP and maintenances + insurance would be around 1000GBP per year. When I was in UK we even got a car for 450GBP and drive it for 2 years without issues.
You can, and yet your total costs including fuel will still far exceed my transport costs. As I've said elsewhere, do your numbers for your use and pick what's best for you.
That's nice and all, but if I were to have done that, when I was living in a small town, I'd have been cold and wet a lot of the time. Don't see how to use the savings to fix that.
I’ve bicycled (on a normal purely human powered bicycle before I got kids) all year round in Scandinavia (and Michigan) in both small and bigger cities for decades. I’ve been neither cold or wet very often. It’s not particularly hard to dress for the weather.
I have cycled year round too, with proper waterproofs. Unless you wear some kind of helmet with a mask, which is not usual, you still get rain in your face. Cold rain. And it rains a lot of the time here.
Rain in the face has honestly never bothered me. Somewhere between -5 and -10 degrees C I replace my bicycle helmet with a ski helmet and ski goggles. Somewhere there I also start wearing a baklava.
We recently went through our first car purchase in over 5 years. Even when you choose a cheaper EV (so worse in non-range aspects) or even compare used, the math still doesn’t work out. EV + rentals for trips costs more over a 5-10 year span even after accounting for the gas and maintenance savings. So I’m kind of confused why people are suggesting rentals for trips as an alternative. You don’t even break even.
KIA Niro: $26,840. KIA Nero EV, $39,600. Plus taxes, fees, and loan interest. If you splurge on the Niro EX trim to get a few features that you don't really need but can't decline on the EV, that brings it to $29,540 - still $10K (25%) less. https://www.kia.com/us/en/vehicles
Yes, for the mainland locations at least. We would fly to Kalispell and rent a car for glacier, nice airports exist for Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. We would be skipping the great American road trip, however, which isn’t really practical in a rental. Glacier is only 9-10 hours away from us by car, so it is definitely road trip feasible. I might wait to go to glacier for a year or two since the charging infrastructure should be better by then.
There wouldn’t be much point to an Alaskan road trip with a rental. Again, just fly and rent a car I guess, but we could get up to Prince George maybe.
These guys [1] took an iX3 to the Kruger Park in South Africa and back with careful planning. They managed to do 100km of self-driving game viewing thru the remote park per day for 4 days without issues.
They recharged out of their accomodation while they weren't out driving. We don't even have electricity 24 hours/day here due to our ongoing generation crisis, so I'm surprised you wouldn't be able to do something similar in the USA or are those two parks just really that remote? Or is it the 120V AC that's the issue?
> These guys [1] took an iX3 to the Kruger Park in South Africa and back with careful planning.
This is not as impressive as you might think, to be honest. What they did is the ideal situation for using EVs: drive short distances and charge overnight.
>> over the course of our 4-night stay, despite driving over 100km per day in the park.
Their needed range was 100km/day, over four days, with overnight charging for each 100km drive.
To get there, they drove for 3 hours, then stopped for 1.5 hours to charge.
Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
If you read their account, they actually believe they would've made it there without stopping to charge, also they used a fast charging station on the trip which would've charged to 80% in 30 minutes (a much more usual break on a long 3 hour trip). Many people stop for lunch on their way to Kruger, I suspect they did this here.
Charging overnight on the slowest plug point in Kruger also delivered up to 210km range, double what they needed per day in Kruger.
It's not really an issue they were just extremely cautious, something you'd expect in South Africa if you know anything about their power grid.
I believe the author was actually trying to show it is actually feasible and range is not a concern.
> 30 minutes (a much more usual break on a long 3 hour trip).
I am fascinated by this comment, because I don't consider a 3 hour trip to be particularly long. Certainly not long enough to require a half hour break in the middle of it.
That said, "range anxiety" isn't the reason that I won't buy an EV at all. Most of my driving would be well covered by EV ranges, and I'd be fine renting a car or using other transportation methods for the occasional long trip.
I personally know my attention span will not be 100% driving for 3 hours straight, a short break is necessary and parking, ordering a coffee can take a bit longer than you'd think.
This is an interesting point. I'd like to see some stats on the cost of battery usage.
I'd also like to know how fast charging a lot but only from 20% to 80% works out cost wise over time. i.e. more stops to fast charge on a long journey but spending less time at each stop.
I have a feeling that if the car companies could get battery leasing and fast charging costs under control then a good charging network would cure a lot of range anxiety.
I've done long journeys in someone else's EV in the UK. Fast charging at motorway stops we'd make anyway really wasn't a problem but I don't know how that affects the cost depreciation.
(I still have the same old diesel car I've had from new for the last 10 years. I'd buy an electric car but I don't really drive much and I don't really like the current offerings).
> This is not as impressive as you might think, to be honest.
Not sure what argument you think I'm making, but OP already owns the car, I'm not making a claim about anything being impressive or trying to convince anybody to buy one.
I shared somebody's detailed log book for a potentially similar kind of trip in a similar vehicle in a more challenging charging environment. I've never been to the US parks in question, and I don't know how much driving one does on those trips, so I made some caveats.
> Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
How is it an issue? They had a great trip and found that the animal viewing was especially enjoyable in an EV, and the experience was significantly different from driving an ICE. If it doesn't work in OPs particular scenario, that's fine, but I don't know why you're making generalised statements about a specific trip.
100km is a short distance, i driver further then that for a day of snowboarding at the local big mountain (130km each way) - I’ve driven 2x that fora day hike
And road trip? Between 500-1000 a day on travel days.
> > Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
> How is it an issue? They had a great trip and found that the animal viewing was especially enjoyable in an EV, and the experience was significantly different from driving an ICE.
That's not relevant to "range is an issue".
> If it doesn't work in OPs particular scenario, that's fine, but I don't know why you're making generalised statements about a specific trip.
Because it is being presented as newsworthy when it really isn't - 100km/day is not what people refer to when they say "range anxiety". A long trip in which 50% of the trip duration is spent waiting for charge is also not newsworthy.
> What part of my comment made it sound like I was presenting something newsworthy?
Can you clarify what the point of your comment was? I'm just a little bit confused about the point of responding to a range-anxiety post with a link to a news article that demonstrates 100km/day range.
It's my understanding that no one is discussing and/or concerned about a range of 100km off a full charge, so my interpretation of your initial post was that it was an attempt to alleviate fears about range, so ... I (naturally) thought that you were presenting the 100km/day range as something new that I (and others) might not have know about.
This is in reference to a game drive. You normally drive in the mornings and late afternoons only, and you stop, wait and watch whenever you see something interesting. You could find one spot and happily spend your hours there e.g. a herd of elephants taking a bath.
Correct, I'm not. I'm replying to someone who already owns an EV and sharing somebody else's logbook with them in case it's useful but for some reason my comments are being completely misinterpreted.
RV parks let you do that here in the state, you can even get to L2 charging in most cases (this is the only way to drive an EV to Alaska ATM), but it isn’t what I would say convenient, or very practical.
Yeah it sounds like the nature of your trips there are quite different from what we would do here (mostly low mileage game drives), so not as applicable to you.
Three phase 16-25A outlets are available (common in buildings/houses) in Europe (230V each phase to neutral, 400V phase to phase). Charging Li-Ion is not a linear process at all, but at so low power (0.02C, compared to the target's battery one) it'd be, as it'd be limited by the source instead.
I live in Livingston MT which is the closest proper town to Yellowstone. We have a two-bay charger at Clarke and Main. I've only seen it used once though.
Ya, the issue for Yellowstone is mostly when you are in the park. You need to head out to charge, but maybe the math works out better than glaciers where the town with charging is farther away, and the roads in the park more vast.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Surprised nobody mentioned externalities yet. Carbon tax, and then you can take a more wholistic view when planning your life.
By the way, landscaping as a hobby does not automatically imply trucks, not outside US at least. Unless you actually do it often and need to transport large loads—then yeah, go for it. You’re part of a small minority that might actually need a truck.
I think you are making an important point: it is easy to think that the value to you of having a car with loading capacity or a dining room for parties can be calculated from the utilization alone.
Right now my car has broken down. I don't actually use it that much since I commute to work on my bicycle. But as it is broken down I realize that those "corner cases" actually occur much more frequently that I had thought. For instance, this week I've needed it twice. Next week I need to take a trip where I could either drive myself to the airport, allowing me to sleep in for another hour or so, or I can use public transport. If I use public transport I will be home much later so a social engagement I was planning to take part in has to go.
Sure, I don't use my car that often anymore since I try to ride my bike when possible. Even in winter. But that's not really how I use my car these days.
As for houses: they're a lot more complicated than I thought. You don't actually know how you are going to use a house and whether it will "work" before you move in. It took us years to figure out what a couple of the rooms would be used for. During covid the room at the top of the house, which was kind of a second living room up until then, became my wife's office. And it works great for that.
Quite the contrary - the edge-cases are not important here. Not because they do not matter, but because trying to address them this way leads to worse results.
Instead of having a giant living room with chairs and table space for 30-50 people, you can temporarily set up something on a lawn, in a park, or rent a dedicated space.
Instead of having a pickup truck to carry a heavy thing once, rent a van that one time or have a trailer hitch on a smaller car (for the confused Americans, in EU even the smallest cars have or can be had with trailer hitches for small utility trailers from 750 to 3500kg).
Instead of having a car with a 1000 km range and 10 minute refuel when you only drive 30km a day, rent a nicer car for those trips or take a train/airplane.
Don't optimize for edge-cases - you get better and cheaper results by optimizing for the median and doing something else for edge-cases. Think of it like trying to do everything with a swiss knife vs. using a few good dedicated tools, renting those you rarely use.
>hose parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
There is a silver lining in smaller houses. They tend to be in denser neighborhoods and hence has some benefits in raising kids. There is no need to setup play dates, they can literally hear each other screaming and come out to play.
In my bigger house neighborhood, I see very few kids just playing casually outside and hence we have to setup play dates. Yes now I have place for table tennis table that I always wanted but I have to call my friends over because bigger house in my case also is bit more further in suburbs.
So big house might be great for parties and hosting guests but i probably traded away closeness to my existing friends for myself and kids both. I just made my median day more boring than before.
Put it another way divorced from the politicized issues. Airbags are for an edge case. Backup parachutes are for an edge case. Having a "rainy day fund", rather than going all-in on more profitable long term investments is for edge cases.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Maybe that's the biggest problem and your current solutions are inadequate?
Totally agree that the edge cases are important. But people spend too much on owning equipment for them that would make more sense to rent.
Take the dining room example. A quick search says it costs ~$20,000 to build a dining room, so let's say a house with one costs $10,000 more than a house without. So by foregoing a dining room, one now has an extra 10k that they can spend however they want.
But that DOESN'T mean that they can't spend it on throwing parties! I'm pretty sure that even spread over many years, 10k dollars can produce a lot of fun times.
This math doesn't make sense. You would only have to use your dining room 2-3 times a year to come out ahead; whereas most people likely host in their dining rooms 12 - 48 times per years. Even at once a month, over 10 years, you aren't going to find a rental place for $83.
From this post, I'm not sure if you have underpriced dining rooms are exceedingly cheap, or if you are unaware how much a rental place actually costs. My parents have a rather nice dining room that they host every major holiday in and they still spent more than 10k in the last ~2 years alone for family gatherings they did away from home.
Edit: Reading through the thread I've come away with the feeling most people are just talking past each other with no frame of reference for how the other lives. There are people it seems coming from cultures centered on weekly/monthly gatherings that are bewildered that someone would consider a dining room superflous.
Not only that, those people simply cannot recognize the costs associated with those hustles. Imagine the scenario: your friends are visiting you, and you are telling them I'm going to book a function room...
Actually it's the opposite. The costs people can't recognize are the massive opportunity costs of having rooms that they don't use 99% of the time. (DISCLAIMER: I am not talking about the people who do use them! Don't bring up your cousin Bob who hosts events all the time and think that you are refuting me.)
This is because people look at the utility of the room when it is used, but forget to multiply that by the frequency of its use.
And yes, sometimes a dining room can surprisingly come in handy for something that comes up. However, this is true of almost any use you can think of for the room. I would venture to say that most people who have dining rooms, who don't routinely host dinners, would be better served making it a video game room, or an aquarium, or a giant closet, or a room for whatever hobby they actually do. Yet across America, millions of dining rooms sit empty for months at a spread, screaming to be made into something that more accurately reflects the lifestyles of their owners.
>Yet across America, millions of dining rooms sit empty for months at a spread, screaming to be made into something that more accurately reflects the lifestyles of their owners.
Every day, my money sits in my bank account screaming to be spent on something intangible...
I guess I question of prevalence of these large dining rooms that are only used for large dinner parties a few times a year and gather dust unused the rest of the time as opposed to somewhere the owners eat day to day and possibly use the surface for various hobbies.
Most people I know don't eat day to day in the dining room. They do probably use it for various hobbies, which kind of shows how little it is used for its intended purpose. They would be better off making it primarily the hobby room.
If you have to rent and pay money, then you are forced to evaluate if you actually need that. The end goal is to prevent you from doing it, even infrequently
I just looked up how much it would be to rent at the closest park to my house (and yes alcohol is allowed). It starts at $25/hour and goes up to $50/hour for a grand ballroom holding 120 people.
Yeah, I've realized that culture just isn't translating. I think dinner party was the wrong word to use because it has primed the conversation where people are imaging the only use for a dinner room is hosting an evening ball.
I know a group, where 8 people + a dungeon master meet weekly/bi-weekly to play DnD. It's a little on the larger side but this would be "dinner" party size. Of course they bring food and drinks as well. It would be a little ridiculous (and expensive) for them to rent a grand ballroom every weekend.
Similarly there are plenty of people I know who look forward to college football and hold similarly sized game days with themselves and significant others. Again nothing special, just 6-12 people ultimately watching tv. Food is brought, and drinks are had, but they aren't having a "rager". Renting a park every weekend to watch college football every weekend would be expensive.
The fact that you would think to rent a park for these kind of things just leads me to believe we are talking past each other. We are missing significant cultural context on the utilities of these rooms. If you don't watch sports or don't play DnD I can see how the idea of needing a dining room is superfluous.
And most people would't throw away their friend groups in order to invest $10k on the S&P. At that point, why even have the money?
It’s not like you even need a large grand dining room. My parents had one and used it fairly regularly for parties. I don’t—the smaller one I had got opened up to the kitchen during a remodel.
I do have a couple rooms that can accommodate 8 or so people each and I use them when I have guests. Also outdoor space in the summer. But I use those spaces for other things as well.
See my edit. This is primarily what I mean. It's like the elderly guy who's incredulous that someone could spend $700/year on video games (~1 new video game per month). They can't begin imagine that anyone could spend so much on something they have no exposure to. Yes, there are people out there who do dinner parties, nothing crazy, every week. Maybe the word dinner party is conjuring the image of a crazy frat party with 300 people. I consider someone like a DnD group that meets every week a dinner party. Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD? How might someone feel being told to consider playing DnD less just because they now have to rent that space?
I am specifically responding to the use of "most people". Certainly some people have parties 1-4 times per month. But most people? As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.
Notably I am not imagining large parties (the 300 people you mention). I just haven't had more than 1 person over to my place at a time in over a year.
> Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD?
No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.
>As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.
You got me there, I'm not a sociologist and I can only draw from experience. I come from an immigrant family in New England and one my of my best friends is an immigrant from Europe which places high priority on the eating together thing. That said you could be right as more and more relationships move online.
>No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.
In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources. We don't have a perfect economy.
> In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources.
I guess I am just thinking about it from an urbanist point of view, and how our view of personal space and a relative lack of focus on publicly accessible community spaces affects our land use and exacerbates the housing crisis. I say this as someone in a family which has been in this country for generations, and probably focused too much on personal wealth and access to large homes. I am learning to appreciate the value of smaller private spaces and bigger public spaces as I have slowly moved from the country to a dense city throughout my life. I go to weekly gatherings with friends, but that's at the local hackerspace not at anyone's house.
I can see how from an immigrant background there is more focus on familial togetherness and I think that is a good cultural trait for us to encourage and support in city design. Though as a queer person my family is not who I want to spend time with on a weekly basis.
Either you're an outlier or I am, but I don't have the data to tell which.
We host a few people, often using our dining room, at least once a week and often more. Sometimes two people sometimes twenty. Sometimes dinner, tea, craft night, board games, dungeons and dragons, birthday parties, whiskey tastings, family visits.
We aren't exceptional in this among our friend group - everyone shares the fun and stress of hosting.
I'm not in some exotic culture either, just a medium sized city in the southeast US.
Yeah, even the 'party people' I know only had 3-4 a year. And just having one or two people didn't entail 'bringing out the fine china' and using the dining room.
My friends have potlucks at at public parks/beaches. For me I often gather at the local hackerspace which is a collective that I’m a member of. I’m joining another collective that’s a tiny farm and they have potlucks. Theres “bike party” where a bunch of rowdy people meet in the streets, ride bikes for 5 miles or so with music blaring out of special speaker filled bike trailers and we take over both lanes of traffic until we ride to a selected location to throw a dance party.
And I don’t have a spare bedroom. Also most of my friend group doesn’t drink.
You're forgetting opportunity cost. The $10k is not stuffed in your mattress, you can do stuff with it. You can buy CDs that return over 5% APY right now (giving you a $500/year budget without even touching your principal). Let alone investing in stock ETFs.
> You can buy CDs that return over 5% APY right now (giving you a $500/year budget without even touching your principal)
Not really, because your principal loses value because of inflation.
If you buy that $10k CD, you get $500 out per year; you pay a couple hundred bucks of that in taxes, leaving $300. If inflation sticks around 3.2%, you'll be losing $20/year before you spend anything.
You still generally owe taxes as the interest is accrued. So, the situation doesn't change-- that CD loses money unless your tax rate is low.
Even with compounded interest not subject to taxation until withdrawal, it's not much better. Even in a ridiculous case with 30 years, 10000 * (1.05^30) = $43220 ; minus .4 * 33220 = $29932; 29932 / (1.032^30) = $11401-- or about .4% real return per year.
Opportunity costs beyond inflation make the picture even more ridiculous.
(10000 * (1.05^10) - 10000) * .67 = 4213. 14213/(1.032^10) = 10372; or about a .36% return.
Not surprising that a lower tax rate gets to the same number sooner through compounding.
BUt the bigger issue is that you have to pay tax on interest as it is accrued, not all at the end. So in your case there's a 3.35% return vs. 3.2% inflation or a .15% net return.
It doesn't matter when you withdraw the money, the taxes will be the same. $10k earning 5% compounded monthly will be $16,470 in 10 years. After paying 1/3 of the gains in taxes, you'll be left with $14,313 which has a present value of $10,446 at 3.2% inflation.
So yeah opportunity costs must be accounted for, but in your scenario the opportunity cost is negligible. We're talking 0.4% per year. Investing in a CD is like pissing in the ocean
Yeah but I can live with a gross car covered in shit that children drop and I get the convenience of a car whenever I want. I never have to pay some peak season pricing.
Owning things means you get to be your own master. That is worth different things to different people.
I know couples without kids who only rent cars but that number goes way down for people who have kids.
Cars are daily-use items for most people, so not in the frame of discussion. Unless you only drive your car like once a year or something, in which case yeah you might be better off renting.
That's pretty much unique to homes (well, real estate in general), and that's because there's pretty much no way to own the land your house is on, at least in the US (maybe there's some really rural parts where it's possible, not sure).
Can't really think of anything else I own that has anything equivalent to a property tax.
I don't have the experience of living in US-style McMansion, but I think I would loath to do all the necessary cleaning, repairs, mowing the lawn, etc. I really don't want to spend most of my weekends doing that.
I said that at my last place. It was a pain to clean and I wasn't getting any benefit out of the space (admittedly that might have been different had it not been lockdown and I'd been able to invite friends around).
Well first of all, it's not "I wish I had less space" but rather "I wish I had the goods and experiences I had to forego in order to obtain and hold onto this extra space".
But anyways you're missing the point. For instance my house had a 'dining room' when I bought it, but I made it into something that I use every day (music studio/band practice room).
The conventional part of me would have just kept it a dining room, and used it maybe once or twice.
The $10k extra the dining room costs when you buy it in 2025 is worth $15k when you sell in 2035. You'll have paid $400 a year in interest, but you'll have made that in appreciation alone.
$10k would get you about $500 a year long term (5%).
$500 a year doesn't go far, and that assumes you don't use the dining room for any other purpose than a couple of parties a year.
In most cases I don't think it will be that simple. The cost of a dining room is not necessarily paid in money. You might for instance find two houses that are the same price where one is a bit bigger because it has a dining room but it is also on a smaller lot. If you choose the first house you are paying for the dining room by accepting a smaller lot.
It might cost that in some cookie cutter subdivision, but in the city it would cost significantly more than that (try finding a 2br condo with a dining room in a big city...). Not to mention furnishing the room and the extra property taxes per year.
Let's say you're into fly fishing, so instead of a dining room you have a room for making lures, which you do every day. You can still have those parties and utilize that room; in fact, that room will look a lot more interesting, have more to talk about, probably be cozier because it actually gets used so its layout will have been refined through real-world testing. And you can still fold out a dining room table if you really need to.
Well, you do have a genuine need for a truck of you're doing landscaping work every second weekend. You could use a tow behind cart as well, at least that's what most people do in Europe.
I got a compact crossover to carry my bike. It has the same size of an engine and emissions as my previous car (a sports mini), just the space inside is bigger, one can carry four people without getting crowded and it doesn't look funny with a tow hitch on. Most sensible people drive these kind of cars in the US as well, I saw a lot of Subaru crossovers.
>I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me.
How about living it as if those things are more important to you that the way they are achieved?
You can see your friends and throw parties without a dining room - set a table in the living room or set up a meeting in some place. Or go see your parents more often at their place, and when they come, spend more time with them and do stuff wherever they stay at. Or do the landscaping work without a pickup truck, like millions of people managed.
An insistance on the rare edge cases is not about "refusing to average an entire life style down to the median day". It's acquiscing to the median day, and then using the edge cases as if they mean you haven't.
> It's not about "refusing to average an entire life style down to the median day". It's acquiscing to the median day, and then using the edge cases as if they mean you haven't.
Thank you for this, this seems like the most rational take.
I went through the more extreme version of this debate myself, I don’t own a car anymore and despite what everybody told me, I haven’t lost any flexibility at all. Between financing the vehicle, gasoline, insurance, vehicle tax and maintenance I save about 4800€/yr. I can do about 360 days of the year without a car. I can rent a car best fitted for the occasion and still save tons of money. I used a van for when I got stuff from ikea, I had a sedan for a road trip and a compact EV for when we had a city trip. With this being a no brainer I’d argue I gained flexibility and improved my not so median days.
The same thing can be said about just switching to a BEV. The BEV will, for the vast majority of people, be an improvement for their median day. You can charge at home, you have less maintenance hassle and the range will be perfectly fine for your median day. At the same time it won’t hinder your above median days not significantly. You can plan out your trips with a little more breaks and you’ll be fine, at the same time, with the money you saved on ToC you can also just rent out a nice ICE for the extra ordinary occasions.
Yeah, I've managed 8+ years in my city without owning a car, and still did lots of things with a car. Just had to change my mindset about costs. Like, paying €50 to rent from a carshare outside the apartment to go skiing for 2-3 hours felt really expensive in the beginning. But then I realized, that with the money saved from not owning a car, I could actually probably do this twice a week during winter season and still come out far ahead.
It's just that when you buy a car, you don't see the price tag on each trip.
Delivery is a thing and the price tag may sting but it’d take a shitload of it to pay the price difference between a truck and a sedan. Plus the cost of worse gas mileage, pricier insurance, higher property taxes, and so on.
This perspective leaves me with little hope for the future of the environment. Nobody is willing to give a single inch when it comes to their comfort, convenience, or self image, externalities be damned.
> Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year.
That's what renting is for. You can rent a better party room than your dining room for very little.
> My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Fine, but I don't think it's this important to most people who have a spare bedroom, they just don't think about it.
> that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies.
Mine too, doesn't mean I need a pickup. But anyways if it's one of your favorite hobbies and you do it every weekend, that's not what I was talking about.
Those solutions are totally inadequate with regard to intangible values. It's as if you simply dismissed the emotional weight of GP's very real point, which is that the edge cases are singular and important. A rented room regardless of how nice is not a substitute for hosting friends and family at ones home.
And don't get hung up on this example. There are endless examples of the same sort and that pose the exact same conundrum.
I think it's one of those things that if you don't get it, you don't get it(and that's fine). There is an emotional element to hosting your guests in your own home - if you don't feel that way then well, there's no need to argue about it, no one is right or wrong here.
- A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.
- The pub to have a room that it rents out. Again, not the common case even in London, let alone in the US.
- Your potential guests to be OK with being at a pub.
- Potentially childcare. If you have to have your party away from your house, you can't put your kids to bed and return to your guests, you have to go home. That part, if you will pardon my French, really fucking sucks.
Hosting your own party has a lot more planning. And don't discount the planning that went into obtaining your own party room in the first place.
> A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.
Don't get hung up on the 'pub' part. It can be a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
It can even be another room in your house. Move some furniture around, put in some speakers, BAM, party room.
It really doesn't. I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so. Most of my neighbours are the same.
> a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
- Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
- Drinking in public parks is not typically permitted, nor is street drinking.
- Arcades and bowling alleys are out in the burbs and require driving to.
What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
I don't care whether you like that or not - I'm not the one who was getting "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
Yeah. In practice I’d probably coordinate food, make something, and make a run to the liquor grocery store but I could also easily handle 8-10 people showing up at my door.
> I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.
The party you're describing doesn't sound like it needs a dining room.
> Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
Keep in mind this cost is compared to an extra or bigger room in your house. You can throw many restaurant parties for the money you'd spend on a larger house. (Invest the difference and the restaurant parties are effectively free)
I don't really understand what people are imagining here though - it's not like "entertaining space" is some gilded-age ballroom for most people making this choice, and the price difference matters if and only if there is an otherwise comparable house you can buy that meets your other constraints.
Even if you buy a house with an entertaining space, you can use it for something that you do more often. For instance, my house had a 'dining room' but I use it as a music studio/band practice room. This way it gets used every single day.
Ours is being used as an office right now, and has been like that since 2020. Still has a dining table, but it's pushed up against a window and home to indoor plants right now, and we've gotten rid of the chairs since then (they were old and beaten up anyway).
Also I don't think it always makes sense to get a smaller house. We got a smaller house and I kind of regret it now, since housing prices and mortgage rates have shot up so much it's now so much harder to upgrade (and the house we got was intended to be a starter home), and also we'd get so much more if we sold a larger house today than our house now.
For example, let's assume prices went up about 50% on average in the past five years for the sake of easy math (not too far from how much my home actually did go up after a reappraisal last year). Buy a house at $300k and it goes up 50% means you can sell it for $450k and make $150k out of it. But buy a $500k home and it goes up 50%, means you can sell it at $750k and made $250k out of it. Granted you're making higher payments that whole time as well but not as much as it went up.
That math doesn't make as much sense now, with prices starting to dip a bit and high mortgage rates muting demand somewhat, however.
You are overstating the difficulty of finding and renting a public place. It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
You are also discounting the costs you have already sunk into throwing your own parties ("I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.")
> What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
Good, I'm happy that you know what you want and are pleased. But I didn't say it was impossible to derive value from that.
> "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
More frustrated with the way some people try to fulfill those preferences, and that every time I bring it up people get so defensive.
Look, no offence, but I'm a lot less likely to go to your rented public space for a party than I am to drop over to the over poster's house for dinner. They're not comparable experiences, other than being social events.
I also think you underestimate how often many people (especially in more social cultures) socialise. It could be literally 100's of times per year.
Exactly. The insight in this thread into how solitary (I would say lonely, one-dimensional) some HN users' lives are has shocked me.
I'm not going to go to the room you rented at a local business, bring a six pack of interesting beers to try together, bring my baby that my friends have been so excited to meet and play with, etc. My friends who like weed aren't going to show up. Not to mention holidays, the hardest time to rent public spaces and the most likely time for friends to gather...
> It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
Sure. “Hi, I know it’s closing time, but can I rent your party space for my friends and I to drink our own alcohol in starting in 15 minutes time” is not exactly the kind of call a landlord would be particularly receptive to.
> There are endless examples of the same sort and that pose the exact same conundrum.
Yes, there are countless cases of it actually making sense to have a spare bedroom. But that's beside the point. My point was that for a lot of people it is a decision that they take instinctually, but does not really make sense.
I really think that's the crux of the matter: these things are all personal preferences that stem from a deeply emotional place, and emotion rarely makes sense according to the laws of logic.
For example: my parents have a truck, a van, and an SUV. Do they need all of those vehicles? No. Do they get used all the time? Yes: my parents are both avid gardeners, they generously lend their vehicles to those who happen to need a truck or a van for the day, and I have several younger siblings who occupy them the rest of the time.
And even if they didn't, I could well see my dad still owning a truck purely for the convenience of being able to drive to the local garden center and pick up a load of mulch on a whim - even if in practice that happened twice a year.
I guess I don't understand the advantage of having a truck over just doing Home Depot scheduled deliveries, if it's only a few times a year. He's paying like $1,000 for each of those two mulch runs, it's much cheaper just to pay someone else to deliver it to you in their truck, and I'd say it's a lot more convenient, since they're doing all the work there. What am I missing there?
The point is loss aversion is a cognitive blind spot which results in people being less happy.
Perhaps you really do make use of a guest bedroom often enough it’s worth spending 10’s of thousands on. But isn’t the case everywhere. Perhaps you’re wasting money on excessive car insurance etc across a lifetime of choice it adds up to a massive drag.
In terms of EV’s people are spending more time driving to stations because they picture the once a year vacation driving taking 1 hour longer rather than the wasted 5 minutes 48 weeks a year which costs them 4.
> My point is that there is a cognitive bias towards overweighting the allocation of resources toward low-frequency events.
As I pointed out upthread, low frequency is not the same as low probability.
It might not make sense to upfront allocate resources for a low probability event, but it certainly could make sense for a high probability event even if it was low frequency ... like a spare bedroom, or a dining room, or a car with good range.
The probability of using those things are 1 i.e. guaranteed.
I think you’ll probably also find that the “spare” bedroom in many houses ends up getting used for other things—storage, a hobby room, (famously) perhaps an office or second office.
My spare bedroom has a futon couch but I actually use the space for various other things most of the time. Most people may have space that’s underutilized much of the time but that doesn’t mean it’s sealed off until they have an overnight guest or a large dinner part. Things aren’t that binary.
I'm surprised to see such a bad take on resource allocation on HN.
When provisioning servers, do you average your throughput and get enough capacity for that average?
Of course not, that would be assinine. You need to be able to serve 24 hours a day, even - especially - during your edge cases. Follow your advice and explain to the CEO that since Black Friday is a "low frequency event," it's fine that your site was down during that one day.
A better argument is that you should choose things, including houses and cars, based on edge cases since that is where meaningful differentiation occurs. If I take one road trip each quarter and my car is unable to handle it, then I bought the wrong car.
No, the correct analogy would be paying for, maintaining, and storing enough servers for Black Friday year round when the option existg to rent them on Black Friday for 1% the cost.
Maybe not with the once per quarter road trip. That might not be a bad frequency for renting a nice road trip vehicle. But I generally agree with what you are saying.
Okay. Then how should we measure the emotional value of seeing and smelling gasoline? Experiencing the nostalgia of pumping gasoline just like the good old days of yore? Can you see the problem here? People ascribe emotional value to all sorts of things that may be financially unwise or environmentally damaging. You waste your money I don't care; but we all have one earth to protect.
My point is, climate change is an extremely big threat that we simply don't have much room for these affordances. 2024 is the year to make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs because that's how urgent the situation is.
I’m pro-ecosystem and pro-weaning off fossil fuels. I’m also tired of the argument that we’re at the point where it’s a do-or-die for individuals to make monetary/QoL sacrifices to switch to EVs as if we had reached the point where this is what’s left and blocking the world from putting an end to global warming.
Maybe focus on area that will have a bigger impact then yet again, foisting the responsibility onto the consumer. Subsidize railroads and public transit, build out commuter rail, reduce air travel, electrify the railroads, move more freight onto rail, electrify trucks.
There are far better targets to reducing the amount of oil and gas burned, ones that are more uniform and less varied them peoples lives not to mention moving people to transit and commuter rail is better then evs anyways
The areas you are describing may have bigger impact like switching to railroads and public transit, but they are more difficult to achieve than switching to EVs and represent a bigger change to people's lifestyles. Relying on that is not going to work. Be practical. If I'm downvoted when I said let's make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs, can't you see the amount of personal sacrifice is way bigger to switch to rail and public transit?
The carbon comes from the ground. The car’s just the delivery mechanism. Why not phase out fossil fuel production à la the Montreal Protocol? If somebody somewhere someday can make money burning oil, they will. Buying an electric car isn’t going to keep carbon in the ground by itself.
Finally! Someone who says it the way I see it. I believe the personal-responsibility-as-a-framework (PRAAF) for solving pollution problems is a joke. I genuinely believe that big petrochemical companies and other stakeholders pushed this story to be able to d business as usual for as long as possible. I know it's true for the "plastics recycling" narrative. Which is and has always been a joke¹ and the petrochemical companies know this. We should not strofe about whether range anxiety is a real problem or not. We should unite to keep oil companies responsible for destroying the climate. They are the ones that made sure every little town in america had a fuel station, thus creating demand, they lobbied against electric cars, they downplayed climate change. We should not wave our finger at other individuals who's contribution to climate change is negligible. We should unite with people who have range anxiety and fix these problems. Force Exxon Mobile/BP/Shell to install fast chargers in every town where there is a fuel station. Force them to install fast chargers all over the country as a start of the reparations for destroying the climate.
Isn't phasing out fossil fuel basically already announced as a goal by various governments around the world? To make that goal realistic, EVs are a stepping stone; you simply can't phase out the production of something when the consumption hasn't been phased out yet.
It's easy to get hung up on specific examples you can't connect with, but our entire lifestyles are centered around preferences, not needs - and I'm sure it's also true for you. All you need is a 3 x 3 x 8 ft sleeping pod, a waste chute, and a dispenser of protein slurry. Almost everything else is there to accommodate the odd whimsical desire.
Do you really need an oven? Most techies don't cook all that often, and it can be cheaper to order take out. More efficient due to the economies of scale, too! Do you really need a smart phone? Do you really need a gaming PC? There's always some other, more barebones way of achieving the same result.
We tend to have a lot of tolerance for what we think enriches or streamlines our lives, but little patience for the same in others. It's also true for politics, where we're always eager to regulate other professions or lifestyles, but not our own.
A lot of people are misunderstanding my point. It's not that intangibles don't matter or that people shouldn't spend money on their preferences.
Trust me; I spent $2,000 on a bicycle recently. Not a sports bike or mountain bike or anything. Just a bike for getting around town. Am I under some illusion that I needed to spend 2k on a transportation bike? Of course not. But it's something that I use every single day and derive great joy from using, so I prioritize having a nice one. So I am no stranger to spending money on optional things.
I also enjoy mountain biking, but I only really do it when I'm with my dad which is like 2 times a year. So instead of buying a mountain bike, I rent them. And I rent nice ones (nicer than I would buy, man those things get expensive).
My point is that there is a bias toward ownership of certain conventional things that don't get used very often, and are easy to obtain temporarily. (And of course every example I used had people responding, "I have that and use it all the time!", which is also missing the point.)
It's not obvious that buying the frequent item and renting the infrequent item is the reasonable thing to for all situations and contexts.
I don't see a complete argument where doing so is strictly more rational than doing the polar opposite, i.e. hypothetically, renting the frequent item and vice versa.
I also think the frequent vs infrequent products are not equivalent in the first place. A dining room is just not the same as a restaurant setting, so a rational trade-off must account for that inequivalence. So far, you have assumed that a home dining room party and a restaurant room party are equivalent social experiences. They probably aren't.
> It's not obvious that buying the frequent item and renting the infrequent item is the reasonable thing to for all situations and contexts.
Owning something means taking on the liabilities of storage, maintenance, and depreciation. Renting allows you to only pay for the parts of those liabilities commensurate with your time of usage. Therefore if your time of usage of something is small, there are relatively more gains in reducing your share of these liabilities in this way.
Conversely, owning confers the benefit of reducing the friction involved in each individual use of something. So it stands to reason that the more useages, the more benefits owning confers.
> I also think the frequent vs infrequent products are not equivalent in the first place. A dining room is just not the same as a restaurant setting, so a rational trade-off must account for that inequivalence. So far, you have assumed that a home dining room party and a restaurant room party are equivalent social experiences. They probably aren't.
I agree that they are different. But the attitude I am arguing against is that of 'if I don't own this thing, these experiences will never happen'. In other words, people seem to be completely discounting the substitute experiences. In reality, there are other places to go besides one's house, and even at one's house there are other things to do besides eating dinner, and even if one wants to eat dinner at one's house, it is not that different whether you eat it at the kitchen table, on a fold-out table in a game room, or in a bona fide dining room.
To the first point, I get the heuristic of a cost-benefit analysis of buying vs renting, with hidden costs being things like maintenance (liabiliities), opportunity cost, transactional convenience (friction). But this heuristic is just that, it has no validation power over e.g. the commenter who pointed out "I want the long car rides to be in my own car which I know and love". Etc. Your mistake is using a heuristic (from idealized spherical cow economics) as a totalizing theory for human motivations.
To the second point, what a dining room offers is social intimacy and formality at once. This is something a kitchen table does not do (formality, think a White House dinner), and a restaurant cannot do either (intimacy, think traditional cultural celebrations at home such as Chinese New Year entailing many social rituals and practices). A dining room has the fundamentally distinct property of being a setting for both. That's the actual source of disagreement which is why there were so many objections by other commenters given your continued insistence that "it's not that different".
> You can rent a better party room than your dining room for very little.
I think this depends on what you value. I've never seen a party room available for rent that was better than a home, personally. The fanciest party room you can rent may look fancier, and if that's the important thing to you, then that's a great solution. Others, however, may place greater value on what you give up when you rent: convenience, intimacy, fewer restrictions on what you can do, etc.
It's about how often the edge case comes up. 4 to 12 times a year, I need to drive 300 miles to visit my family. 10 to 30 times a year, I'll drive 50 to 60 miles to visit friends/family or see specialist doctors or take trip to some interesting event. But on the vast majority of days I drive less than 10 miles a day.
My edge cases come up fairly frequently and I don't really have a good fall back for them i could spend a huge amount of money or time to do the 50 mile trips via uber or transit. Or, I could own a hybrid. I could do something similar with less reliability for the 300 mile trip. Or I could own a hybrid. In both cases, i could keep an app that tells me where the charge stations are and account for any possible needed charging... or I could just own a hybrid and gas up at any random station I pass in 5 mins.
This is the problem of EVs. Yeah edge cases, but a lot of people can have their edge cases come up fairly frequently. And worse this changes over time. People like to plan for probably outcomes over the life of the vehicle. It's not strange to think you might a few hours a handful of times a year. The more people you need to transport with you the more alternative travel methods and the uncertainty of the charge network starts to matter.
If an EV were significantly cheaper than an ICE, then maybe it would be worth the extra hassle and expense of figuring out an alternative for an occasional long trip. But EVs are often more expensive, especially compared to a used ICE. So the benefits, at an individual level, often don't outweigh the downsides, even if it is only relevant occasionally.
Used cars, sure, but you're often either paying for someone else's problem or losing out on modern safety features.
For new cars, especially with the tax credit (which most americans qualify for), EVs are cheaper. That's not even factoring in maintenance costs over 5 years nor savings from charging at home (of course not everyone can charge at home).
The point is EVs cost more (sticker price) than gas cars and have less utility.
I'd consider an EV for my daily commute if I could buy a new one for $10K. I think that's a reasonable price for a small car that has maybe a 100 mile range.
But automakers are offering $50K cars and above that don't fully replace gas cars. No thanks.
The sticker price is just the "obvious" price you see when it comes to owning a vehicle. But everything else still matters, routine maintenance and gas alike. Ignoring it only sets yourself up for being surprised when those bills come due.
> I'd consider an EV for my daily commute if I could buy a new one for $10K.
I'd consider an ICE vehicle if I could buy a new one for $10K. Have a suggestion?
There's a steady supply of used vehicles which you can expect another 100K-200K miles out of (i.e. the lifespan of a set of EV batteries). My two vehicles are both 8+ years with more than 100K miles (one approaching 200K) and neither requires significant maintenance outside the standard replacement of fluids and filters each year - the total amount I spend on them is less than a single car payment on a Model 3 or Mach-E, perhaps three payments if you count gas.
12,000 miles / 25mpg * $5/gallon = $2400
Maintenance is, at a very high estimate, $1000 per year, and that's paying a shop for everything - far less if I did it myself
Payments on a 5 year loan at 6% for a $40K EV (such as the Tesla 3) is $773/month or 9276/yr
On my local Craigslist I can find my vehicle, one year older but significantly lower mileage (85K) for $18000. I can find my vehicle but with more miles (222K) for $4000 (admittedly that sounds low and I have suspicions) or my vehicle with slightly higher mileage (115K) but in a higher trim for $11K.
You'll forgive me for continuing to drive my car or for buying an exact replacement rather than rushing to buy an EV.
We are still pretty close to this even with inflation, cheapest is around $16k sticker from a quick search. I remember not too long ago Hyundai was giving cars for sub 10k new.
My in-laws bought two new—yes, new—ICE cars (some Chevy model, I think) for under $10k, total, not each, 12ish years ago. Car prices have gone totally bananas since then. I hate whatever’s happening with that.
People who like to stand out buy big cars. Big cars make people in small cars feel unsafe. So people replace their small cars with big cars. So, people in big cars buy bigger cars.....and so on.
So now every car has to have more 'safety'. Maybe if the car hitting me wasn't 5000lbs, at chest level and didn't accelerate like a bullet..... I wouldn't need more 'safety'. So now every one has bigger, "safer" and more expensive cars....... all while American road deaths keep growing with no limits in sight.
One day I will see a Ford-150 bed used for pickup truck tasks. Today is not that day.
No, it's the fact Cash for Clunkers ruined the used car economy. I've always driven used cars. A 2007 VW Jetta. A 2008 Mazda Protege, a 2002 Oldsmobile (until 2018). From 2018 to 2023 a 2007 Toyota Prius. 2023 a 2013 RAV4.
I looked at EVERY used car in a 100 mile radius on every platform you can think of and the 2013 RAV4 with 105,000 miles at 15k hit the dealer lot the night before I purchased (they had multiple calls for that vehicle while I was filling out paperwork). Its because all the old people sold off there late 90's and 2000's cars that there STILL are no used cars anymore that aren't absolute junk (155k mileage plus junk selling for 15k - 20k). This lets dealerships sell new cars & trucks for way, way too much. If Cash for Clunkers never happened, used cars would be the competition for new cars like the Toyota Camry which are uncomfortable, basic vehicles but which set the pricing floor for the other manufacturers vehicle lines. No competition so set it at a high price point marketing it as new even though the rest of it is junk and then you can charge a premium on oyher vehicle options. (Hate the Canry but I love Toyota vehicles don't get me wrong).
All us poor people who just want a to work and back vehicle & who would buy off craigslist from private sellers don't have a market anymore and have to go dealerships. Pickups are overpriced I'll agree, and are faux status symbols, but the used market itself reaked havoc on trucks too.
The cheapest Chevy from 2010 I can find is the 2010 Aveo LS at $11,965. My only guess is that it was some 2010 model that had been sitting for 10+ months and they needed to get them off the lot.
Even with this, a new Aveo for $12k in 2010 would now be ~$17k with inflation. New cars today seem to be around $17k and that includes the Versa and the Mirage. Of course wages haven't risen with inflation but that's another can of worms.
To be fair, I don’t think they’d have gotten a single one for $5k or less, and only got that price by buying the pair, and I think the new model years were about to arrive or just had. But they were new cars!
So because she ignored both the beep and the reserve light turning on you spend quite a bit extra up front. More than once!
I'm willing to bet she isn't that dumb.
I will admit that I ran a car out of gas once in the last 40 years: driving to Flagstaff AZ in a Prius there aren't many gas stations and I ignored the reserve light and the beep because I thought I could make it. Nope! 5 miles short. Maybe the 3000' grade I had to climb just before had some influence. However... never again. OTOH, that Prius that ran out of gas traveled several thousand miles over the years at over 90mph across the West, getting ~40mpg which works out to ~400 mile range. That right there is the entire argument, done.
To be fair, the car she had at the time did not beep on low gas.
That said, most of the utility comes from not having to spend time stopping by a gas station to fill up. Just park in the garage and spend about 10 seconds plugging in the car, and it's filled up in the morning ready to go.
The flip side of this point is for non-trivial distances the people in the ICE vehicles with 400+ mile ranges mostly invariant to speed only now begin to realize how amazingly convenient it is to only have to stop for < 10 minutes every 5-6 hours or so.
Do people who think the only use of a vehicle is the home-work-supplies circuit? Don't you ever take a weekend off and go out of town? You really want to deal with the whole rental car scenario when you're supposed to be off? Or, oh well, I'm just gonna commit to spending a good chunk of my time on this vacation sitting around twiddling my thumbs at a charging station. I got an acquaintance who drove a decaying Tesla with <200 mile range from Atlanta to NYC and back and then bragged to me "it wasn't that bad". Yeah, I was polite.
Lotsa magical thinking going on here. And I haven't even pointed out that in vast swathes of the country the rental car option isn't even remotely convenient.
Honestly, it just depends. Atlanta to NYC would be a 2 day for me. Even in the gas car, I'd only do ~650-700 before a stop.
In an EV, that's ~11 hours on day 1, charge up at the hotel, and do one 15 minute stop on day 2. Before I had an EV, I'd do the same thing, just with ~10 hours on day 1 and my stop on day 2 might be at a different place.
But this is traveling for leisure with family. It might be different if I were really desperate to get there fast. I'd never rent a gas car to save the couple of hours, but also arrive much more tired.
>"Used cars, sure, but you're often either paying for someone else's problem or losing out on modern safety features."
Even though I can afford it I've never bought new car. Call me lucky but I did not feel like I was paying for somebody else's problems either. All my cars worked fine for me. Some maintenance and repairs but nothing major / expensive. For example used Grand Caravan I paid $5K for on the auction cost me another $1K to put in proper order and then served me faithfully 10 years. Only got rid of it because the rust had taken the best of it.
Yeah, I made a spreadsheet about this, and (at California gas prices) my Tesla breaks even with most ICE cars surprisingly quickly (just gas costs, add in maintenance and it’s even better)
I've been considering an EV, but this got me to look at the break even point for how much I actually drive (5,000 mi / year), my gas mileage (30 mpg), my offpeak power costs ($0.20 / kWh), and typical gas prices here ($4.50 / gal). It would take me about 20 years to save $25,000, which is about the difference between my current car and a Tesla. That said, I probably shouldn't consider a Tesla, since it occasionally snows pretty hard here in Northern Nevada and the Tesla's snow handling is not the best.
I’d be curious to see your numbers.
Based on my electrical costs of about $0.35/kwh and 87 gas holding steady below $5 for nearly a year, 1000 miles driven in my real-world 45 mpg Camry hybrid costs about $110 while the same in Tesla Model Y costs about $95.
Tesla however is $10k to $15k more.
The only maintenance my Camry will need for the next decade or so that does not exist in Tesla is regular fluid changes which amortize to about $200 per year
Ps in SF Bay Area and don’t qualify for tax incentives
I agree. In the SF Bay Area, especially in PG&E’s regions where average KWh is $0.40, a hybrid makes more economical sense and it isn’t even close.
The math is skewed even further once you add the extra $500 you pay for CA annual registration for an EV vs. Hybrid (personal experience, Mach-E vs. Accord Hybrid).
Definitely it's massively less compelling in areas with extremely high electricity costs. That's pretty much as expensive as electricity gets in North America, isn't it? I think it's significantly more compelling basically anywhere else. E.g. in Ontario where I live, if you're set up appropriately and charge between 11pm and 7am it's $0.028/kWh (CAD), i.e. less than 3 cents per kWh, or roughly 1/35th the price you're paying.
If I've done my math right, that's works out to be less than 2$ USD per 1000km? A difference of 108$/1000km is 1728$/year for the statistically average-driving Ontarian. Adds up pretty fast!
SF Bay Area is an outlier for electricity pricing, average US rate is less than half that according to: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
and off-peak rates are typically less than average where time of use metering is in effect (my off-peak rate is less than 1/3 of your rate). My family's EV costs about 1/4 to 1/3 as much per mile to fuel as our ICE (and I typically drive the EV with more spirit). For me, over 100k miles, I expect to save about $10k in fuel costs. I agree that the savings isn't as substantial to you because of your extremely high electric rates, but for many, a standard model 3 or y will offer lower TCO than a camry.
All of California is an outlier, but here we are with 10% of the US population.
I live in Ventura County and the cheapest my electricity gets is around 33 cents per kwh. During peak it's a whopping 60 cents per kwh.
I also assume that chart includes baseline credits and averages out the tiers - your first kwh is cheaper than your 600th kwh. Any brand new EV charging will be charged at your top rates and be more expensive than what those averages represents pretty much everywhere in the US.
> I live in Ventura County and the cheapest my electricity gets is around 33 cents per kwh
If you have an EV (or some other devices), you can qualify for the TOU-D-PRIME plan which gets you $0.23/kWh[1]; at this rate, for my car usage patterns, the Tesla Model 3 is a clear win over any car more than $25k or so. If you have solar, you can drive the prices even further down (I offset basically all of my 2022 bill, but 2023 was cloudier and rainier than typical and so I'm doing worse this year).
Wow that blows. I'm on TOU-D-5-8PM because I work from home, and in a place that can have warm summer nights.
I stop work at 5pm so I can power down my computer before electricity gets expensive.
And 8pm works great for us because in summer it can be 70 degrees overnight, and the kids start going to bed at 8pm so I can cool down the house a bit without paying crazy prices for that.
I do a lot of thermostat trickery in the summer. During the day we set it to 76, from 4-5pm set it down to 72 (to avoid running in the expensive hours), then we raise it to 78 from 5-8pm, then we set it down to 74 at 8pm.
The formula is pretty straightforward, the sheet itself is a bit of a mess. Take the price you pay for each car; take your number of miles driven a year; use the mpg and kWh/mi to calculate the operational cost of each for a year (I think I used a conservative value of like 180 kWh/mi for my 3). Then multiply by the number of years owned and add the purchase price.
Let me guess: you are low-balling your Tesla maintenance costs, because you haven't yet had an issue. Well, guess what, when you do, dealing with it will be expensive.
RepairPal says the average annual cost to maintain a Model 3 is twice that of a Honda Civic.
I’m not counting maintenance for either vehicle, though: and, over the expected ownership time, I save enough with electricity for the Tesla to pay for a $16k battery pack replacement (and, over the four years I’ve owned the tesla, I’ve probably spent like $2000 on Tesla maintenance and $6k on maintaining the Odyssey, so I think I’ll save enough on regular maintenance to break even when I have to replace the battery)
The thing about EVs is that they are new so I'm not sure how to calculate maintenance cost reliably. I'm thinking about after 8-10 years. Some ICEs can reliably run "forever" if well maintained, like some Toyota ones.
They’re not _that_ new anymore: the original Model S was sold in 2012. So, while they’re still young compared to ICE cars, we still have at least a decade of data on them.
I do agree, though, that there’s some novelty risk but (a) my numbers only include gas (and I’m not factoring my solar savings in at all because I ran the numbers before I installed solar) and (b) I’m spending quite a bit every year to maintain my Odyssey and basically $0 to maintain my Model 3 (only exception is I’ve changed the tires once, but I’ve gone through a couple sets of van tires in the same time period for a similar total expenditure). I think that I’d come out ahead even if I had to replace the battery (or sold the car when this is needed). Also, the depreciation on my Tesla over the last four years is much more in my favor than the van’s depreciation in the same time.
Although, there’s a question of under warranty vs. out of warranty replacement here: replacing the battery under warranty doesn’t really add to the TCO; also, I assume the battery packs across the Tesla models are similar enough that newer cars incorporate the learnings from older models.
I fly a couple times a year but don’t own a plane. (Of course, that would be impractical)
I think the issue is largely around having to adjust the mindset to plan in advance.
For the roadtrip scenario, it might be better to just rent a vehicle for a week. For transporting large or heavy items, renting a truck beats owning one.
Renting a car for a week is close to a monthly car payment(less true today) - and the more frequently you have to do this- the less sense it makes. I've also found it increasingly difficult to book rental cars in advance that will actually meet my needs. it's a bit of a gamble to depend on that.
Mainstream rental car industry being a complete mess doesn't help - they don't bother to even promise you the make and the model, best they can do is "a sedan with 4 doors and automatic transmission." I have no idea why people don't care as if that's something normal.
There are services like Turo, where you know the exact car you're getting, but, sadly, they're far from universally available. And it's pricier, of course.
In their defense, they have a lot of consumer-friendly policies (free cancellation, the ability to add on days to your rental) that would make it difficult to promise particular makes.
That's fair, but I guess my problem is that they don't even seem to try.
All rental agencies surely know what fleet they have - typically it's as uniform as possible, to make the maintenance easier. Yet, it's not exactly unusual to see that a particular location has a fleet of entirely different make than they had listed on the website. Or, e.g. I know a place that doesn't have "compact" cars (or have so few of them I've never seen one on the lot), and just automatically "upgrades" everyone to "mid-size" - no clue why, they're a good (aka not scammy or too blatantly overpriced) company otherwise.
My only guess is that no one complains or cares about it.
Obviously, if all you care about is getting from point A to point B somehow then you're probably don't care much.
However, different cars have different characteristics, such as safety ratings (how likely you're to stay alive if you crash is important factor for some people), instrument clusters (my personal pet peeve - most cars have very poor UI/UX), rear window and mirror usefulness (in some you can get a clear view, in some you can barely see if someone's directly behind you or not), and all sorts of "luxuries" such as additional convex mirrors, backup camera or smartphone integration (CarPlay/Android Auto).
All those things - save for safety ratings - are quite subjective, so while some folks may just shrug and wonder how those matter, they make a lot of difference for others. The difference between a car that can drive and a car than you can drive pleasantly (or confidently) is probably significant.
Many of those are dependent also on trim level, not just make and model; which makes the original point moot, no?
But maybe I've also been spoiled by German car rental places — literally every single car I got here in the past ~5 years has had CarPlay, backup cameras, etc.
And I'd care about all of the above if I were to _buy_ a car, but for a week (or two) long trip, I genuinely can't imagine caring.
(Though, I guess, I am quite opinionated when it comes to picking my computers and phones, etc; and if I had to use a loaner Windows PC for a week I'd probably be mad too. I guess people can have that kind of preferences in cars?)j
Not to mention something I've been running into lately when renting cars: They will only rent to you if you are from out of state, and oftentimes you have to show them that you have a valid flight ticket. They don't like renting cars to people who live in the local area, and they're getting more and more strict on not doing it.
I got refused a rental in the middle of Manhattan once because I wouldn't show them a return flight ticket (I actually did have one, but it's none of their business).
I charged the company back via my credit card provider, and have never even considered doing business with that company again.
That one was Hertz. I use Avis pretty much exclusively now. They're mostly "ok" but certain pickup locations (SFO for example) are notoriously terrible at actually having a car ready like they are supposed to.
The most recent one for me was in Chicago at Routes Car Rental, and yes it was near the airport. It has also happened to people in my group in New York and New Jersey.
This is very strange. I rent cars routinely from a few blocks away and it's never been a problem. (I don't own a car and occasionally will take a day or weekend trip with a rental car...).
That's not really a good analogy, unless you already own a short range plane that you use for your daily trips, and to accommodate your occasional long trips, you'd need to own a long-range plane that's actually cheaper than your short range plane, albeit with slightly higher operating expenses (and of course, greater emissions)
If gas were much more expensive, it'd be much easier to sell people on EV's, but since there's not a huge difference in operating expenses between an EV and ICE car, why wouldn't people stick with the ICE car to meet 100% of their needs instead of an EV that meets 90% of their needs?
If the USA had a robust charging network for all cars (not just Teslas), then it'd be a different matter but I've regularly encountered broken chargers (shown as operational in the app) as well as long lines for chargers (at 20-30 minutes per car, even a few cars waiting in front of you makes for a long wait).
I thought I'd have traded in our second car (a Hybrid, not a plug-in) for a BEV by now, but have run into enough charging difficulties on long trips to make me hold on to it. Renting an ICE car for long trips isn't really a good option since it's 30 minutes to the nearest car rental place and they have no parking, so it means my wife and I have to drive an hour to pick up the car and bring it back home and may the same trip after we get back from our trip.
Most rental vehicles kind of suck unless you pay a fortune, which quickly eliminates any cost savings. And the rental agencies don't even allow for reserving a specific vehicle. In my experience at busy times you have to take whatever is left, which might not be suitable for a long road trip.
Renting is a pain. You need to get from home to the rental place. Hope that they have the vehicle you reserved and don't dump a smaller or massively larger one on you (which seems more typical). Then do your trip being extra careful not to avoid any vehicle damage at all (or else pay the high daily fee for full coverage). Then when you return it, you need to drive around to find a gas station to make sure it's full (or pay some inflated fee), then return it, and then find transportation back home (which can be a pain with a lot of luggage).
Sure it works if you're doing those trip once ever year or two. But if you do 1 or 2 road trips per year? Or more?
It's much more convenient just to have the vehicle in the first place. Plus you get the benfits of having it all the time.
I walk the dog through a strip mall parking lot every day. There are some U-Haul rental vans that are always there. So pretty clearly, someone is doing daily rentals on a permanent basis. The prices are painted right on the vans: $19.95 / day plus mileage.
Or maybe they just bought the vans from U-Haul and never repainted them? Interesting question. But U-Haul has a box in the strip mall for dropping off your keys, so I suspect they are rentals.
I was thinking of doing a comparison between actually buying or leasing a van vs. paying the daily rental fee. Could there be an economic inefficiency where it's cheaper to rent every day than buy? I'd need to know the year of the van, for one thing.
> Could there be an economic inefficiency where it's cheaper to rent every day than buy?
It's never going to be cheaper to rent daily than to buy. Renting daily has you paying the amortised purchase cost and a little extra for the costs of the rental provider (real-estate, offices, employees), and then a little more for the profit of the rental provider.
If the rental provider charges only what the amortised purchase cost is, they'll be out of business in a few days, if not hours.
> The fact is, they are doing it. You're right, there might be some good explanation, but just dismissing the fact is never a good look.
I didn't make any statement about whether or not they are doing it, I pointed out that it costs more to do so. That's the fact in this case: the selling price of a non-loss-leader item can't be lower than the cost of providing it!
That there are people doing it is no indication that it is at all cost-effective to do. They may have some good reason for paying more (poor credit so cannot buy a vehicle, need the "daily" for only 3 months, it's a temporary solution while their own vehicle is being repaired, etc).
The fact is, it costs more to rent daily than to simply buy. The theory you have is that it must be more cost-effective to rent daily than to buy.
I have been doing this for 5 years. EV for daily commutes, rentals for hauling stuff for my landscaping hobby and ICE rentals for roadtrips. I must have rented close to 100 cars for those roadtrips. Ended up getting a large ICE wagon in the end:
- rentals for the roadtrips cost a lot (about 1.5-2k p/w for a SUV like an X5), and those cars are still poorly equipped. It ruins the fun of a roadtrip if the car audio sucks or the windshield is made of cheapest, thinnest glass. I never knew car companies sell premium vehicles with such low trims. Its a hassle too as the rental companies around where I live examine the car like they were buying it from me. One has to interact with various people and spend the time, and its not always an enjoyable experience,
- rentals for hauling stuff are perfectly ok even for weekly use. I'd still love the luxury of owning a toyota proace full time, but there is less of a reason to own sth like this for me.
Today I saw a sign above the dropbox: "please park your returned trucks <in the lot>"
So I think what's happening is: U-Haul keeps the vans in the strip mall parking lot. (Do they have to pay the mall for that? Who knows?)
Possibly some of the mall tenants rent it occasionally, and this lets them get the van right at their place of business, instead of having to go somewhere and pick it up.
Maybe the keys are always left in the van! I could test that, but I don't want to get in trouble for car theft. Maybe U-Haul doesn't have to worry about someone stealing it, since they could have a locator device in it.
If the edge cases are about missing charging infrastructure: this is not an inherent issue with EVs since the infrastructure for ICEs is simply way more developed. It will slowly become better as EVs become more prevalent.
It's a more difficult issue for very long range drives where an ICEs full range is required to get to the next gas station.
So, my Tesla is about as convenient as my Honda Odyssey to drive from Los Angeles to Houston. And, since I need two cars anyways (because of a wife and kids), the Tesla is a great car to have for all the trips where I don’t need more than five seats.
The sense of self-entitlement in this thread makes me depressed. Intelligent, educated adults react like children when you tell them they can't have all the toys.
> But I like living in this kind of excess!
Sure, and I'm sure you deserve it. As do we all. But guess what? In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close.
> How preposterous, I certainly don't live in excess!
Oh yes you do. On a global and historical scale, if you can afford a car, then you live in excess. I'd bet that all of us that read this website do. You need some perspective.
> But I pay for myself!
No you don't. If the planet is failing to even sustain civilization from this lifestyle, clearly somewhere there are costs that aren't covered. The market has no solution for the external costs that most things in our lifestyle incur.
> But the alternatives would mean a slight inconvenience to me! I would have to adjust and re-evaluate things I've grown used to. They're not the 100% optimal solution for me personally!
Well, I'm sorry that the freaking possible end of future civilization causes an inconvenience in your modern life of abundance. Actually no, I'm not. If stopping and waiting at a charging station those three times a year you make an 8 hour trip is what it takes to ensure a healthy life for future (and even current) generations, then I'm saving my concern for more pressing matters. Heck, I'd even argue that renting an ICE car on those occasions might be a reasonable price to pay, no matter the (in the grander scheme of things) slight inconvenience this means.
> If stopping and waiting at a charging station those three times a year you make an 8 hour trip is what it takes to ensure a healthy life for future (and even current) generations, then I'm saving my concern for more pressing matters.
The meaningful changes we would need to ensure a healthy future are way, way harder than getting used to electric vehicles. The fact we cannot even do such a straightforward transition is beyond ridiculous.
> it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip.
"everyone" doesn't own a car in the first place, and owning one to go on family trips is not contingent on "everyone" owning a car.
Sustainability is a moot point. We're undergoing an aggressive shift to renewables in the West, including with vehicles, as a matter of policy. Issues pertaining to climate cannot be abated solely with a reduction in emissions.
Notwithstanding, "degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk. The rise in emissions year over year stem from demand in East Asia.
> "degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life
I did not know that "degrowth" people are for banning quality of life improvements for all economic strata. Do you have any sources because this just sounds like a giant strawman.
"If one wants to keep world GDP more or less as now one must (A) “freeze” today’s global income distributions so that some 10-15% of the world population continue to live below the absolute poverty line, and one-half of the world population below $PPP 7 dollars per day (which is, by the way, significantly below Western poverty lines). This is however unacceptable to the poor people, to the poor countries, and even to degrowers themselves.
Thus they must try something else: introduce a different distribution (B) where everybody who is above the current mean world income ($PPP 16 per day) is driven down to this mean, and the poor countries and people are, at least for a while, allowed to continue growing until they too achieve the level of $PPP 16 per day. But the problem with that approach is that one would have to engage in a massive reduction of incomes for all those who make more than $PPP 16 which is practically all of the Western population. Only 14% of the population in Western countries live at the level of income less than the global mean. This is probably the most important statistic that one should keep in mind. Degrowers thus need to convince 86% of the population living in rich countries that their incomes are too high and need to be reduced."
The quote doesn't even support your claim. Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.
Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.
Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical. You express concern for the developing countries, and at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone. So as long as only the rich (us) have cars, it's ok?
> Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.
My claim is that either it does, or B is the alternative. Neither is realistic.
> Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.
In the first place, growth need not lead to such catastrophic problems (see the Noah Smith links), in the second, that has no bearing on whether lifting a country out of poverty improves their quality of life; it clearly does.
When immigrants move to the West for a better life, what makes it better is easily be qualified: houses, vehicles, electricity, gadgets, consumption in general, and better jobs. It's not for the healthcare. Those things are made possible, or imply, higher income.
> Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical.
Stop projecting. That is arrogant.
> at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone
I did no such thing. It isn't unsustainable. Unsustainability would have to imply global population growing in perpetuity. Not only are we nowhere near lacking resources, global population growth is projected to stagnate.
What's more, between innovation and aggressive transition to renewables, we more efficiently use resources and can expect diminishing global carbon emissions in the near future.
Western fertility is already stagnant. The only reason we grow is a matter of federal policy: the immigration rate. And immigrants come because of quality of life.
> your claim that westeners are not the biggest emitters is factually incorrect
Again, I made no such claim. I claimed that the *growth* in global emissions is primarily driven from East Asia.
1. No, you claimed that any degrowth strategy is equivalent to banning quality of life improvement across all economic strata, which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata. The realism of its success comes down to politics, not economic or technological factors.
2. Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic. There's no sign of turning it around in any kind of relevant time frame.
3. A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty. GDP as a measure of quality of life is deeply flawed. You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc. Sure, lifting an individual from poverty through a raised income raises quality of life but that is a very simplified picture of what is actually going on. And of course, most relevant for the discussion at hand, you also need to look at the long-term effects of the growth model that is driving the economic growth. If you look a few decades ahead, our current model doesn't work. It's starting to fall apart even now.
4. I apologize for commenting on your personality, of which I know nothing.
5. That is a very narrow point of view on sustainability. Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof? Clearly, if we are consuming resources at a rate much higher than they are reproduced, it's not sustainable. Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.
6. You are clearly dismissing the content of even the article you're commenting. Which is of course well within your rights to do. There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector. It's not even close to happening in a time frame that's relevant. It would be interesting to see what data you're looking at that suggests otherwise.
7. I apologize for misinterpreting you. But either way, the West is still a far greater emitter per capita. So again, going back to your concern that we shouldn't limit developing nations from achieving the same wealth we have, we have no right to point any fingers.
> which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata.
I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'
This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.
> Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic.
This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.
> A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty.
Improved quality of life for impoverished countries depends on it, which isn't the same as saying they're equivalent.
The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.
> You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc.
If a country is poor as fuck, these are all a moot point. The bottom rung of countries will have worse quality of life regardless of distribution scheme.
> Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof?
Tautology. Lack of sustainability by definition implies a scenario, not unlike the Malthusian argument, that there is a perfectly linear upward trajectory for land encroachment, resource extraction and emissions (which will lead to exhaustion of one resource or another, or ecological collapse).
The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.
We need short-run solutions, surely, because climate is an imperative problem in the near-term. That's what the shift to renewables and investment in innovation is for, and the Green New Deal spin from re-grouped degrowthers is starting to sound a lot like that anyway.
> Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.
lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.
The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.
> There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector.
Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.
> greater emitter per capita
Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.
> we have no right to point any fingers.
I argue that developing countries are within their right to increase emissions to improve their quality of life.
> I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'
> This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.
No, that was not clear to me. Especially not as you replied to someone else and confirmed that yes, degrowth means preventing improvement of quality of life across all economic strata. But let's not make this a "I-said-you-said" argument. Fair enough. We all seem to agree that degrowth doesn't necessarily imply degrowth across all economic strata.
Either way, note that nowhere did I even propose a "degrowth" strategy. I was merely saying that going on defense and conjuring all kinds of emotional arguments for why you personally can't dispense with your huge gasoline truck for reasons that are really quite trivial in the grander scheme of things, is very immature and selfish. Also very short-sighted, even from a selfish perspective. Nowhere did I suggest that you can't at least shift consumption from CO2E-heavy goods to less CO2E-heavy goods. That would in theory not require any degrowth whatsoever, merely a shift to more sustainable consumption even if the level of total economic consumption stays the same.
> This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.
Again, I don't share your narrow view of sustainability as equivalent to "resource extraction". Clearly, if the model induces external costs that threaten to end civilization as we know it and the economic models or at the very least radically decrease quality of life and incur huge economic and human costs in the foreseeable future, it is not sustainable. Sustainability, by the definition I know, means that you can keep the system or behavior unchanged. It doesn't matter if we have the potential to keep extracting fossil fuels in the current rate for millennia, if a side effect is a civilization-ending environmental catastrophe. The amount of resources is irrelevant. Unless you factor in "livable climate and environment" as valuable resource, it doesn't work.
> The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.
That model has obvious flaws and has been criticized by many. For one, the available data is lacking and hand-picked. Secondly, there have been many instances where GDP has risen alongside with poverty, if measured on a national level. See India for example.
> The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.
Really, there's no prediction that suggests that the current trajectory of emissions is catastrophic? Well, if you're gonna dismiss all climate models or predictions, then this whole discussion is irrelevant and I have nothing more to say.
> lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.
> The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.
> Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.
You are way too technology-centered. It doesn't matter if there are technological solutions on a lab table somewhere. You have to factor in rates of adoption, political incentive, scale, regulations, economics, etc etc. Given that, there's absolutely no indications that we are anywhere near on track for deploying technological solutions on a time-scale that is relevant. I'd love to see your data if you think otherwise.
> Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.
Of course total emissions of a specific nation doesn't matter most. Total global emissions matter. It doesn't matter for the climate if people are spread out - it only matters for the local environment which is a different issue. And from a fairness perspective, of course you need to look at per capita. Why should you or I be entitled to a lifestyle that we acknowledge would not be anywhere near feasible if adopted by everyone?
> In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close.
It actually is. The only impediment is neurotic busybodies who are obsessed with making everyone poor because they've fallen for the current strain of doomsday millenarianism.
I think what makes it hard to be realistic about these things is that they're all aspirational. People want to be the kind of people who have parties, have guests often, do big projects that need a truck. Admitting to yourself that you don't need these things is admitting that you're not living up to the ideal in your head.
This take is overly cynical. Burying a house with a nice entertaining space or a good set of tools is about reducing the friction of doing the things you want. Owning a treadmill and walking to the other room is way easier than going to gym after work when you're tired.
It's far far easier to throw a party when it just means inviting people over and making or ordering food than renting an entertaining space. It's easier to work on a project when you have the tools in your garage than if you had to go to the hardware store or go rent a u haul.
For all the talk of rampant consumerism the stuff on the bottom of my list of things to complain about are purchases intended to reduce your reliance on buying things. Owning nothing, making nothing, and renting other people's stuff and labor for every task is peak consumerist behavior disguised as "efficient" "minimal" living.
The point probably doesn't land as well on this particular website where incomes skew high, BUT...
a LOT of people do not have the rosiest finances. Maybe it is student loans or credit card debt or whatever. But sure, maybe it makes sense for people with more wealth than they will ever spend to have extras around 'just in case'. But if you're not in that situation, I think it's something a lot of people should look at a lot harder than they do.
In my mind these things aren't really at odds. It can both be true that in a society where folks have disposable cash they're willing to spend it to optimize low frequency events, and companies are willing to encourage this behavior for the reasons I mentioned above.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Not in this situation. If you take a family trip[1] once or twice a year, that's not an edge case, that's an annual case.
The other thing you are missing is that those routes that are longer than the EV range are busy every day!
If you go out, today (non-peak season), and see 2000 cars drive that long route today, that's 2000 car owners today that need that range, or 2000 car owners who would tell you "range anxiety" if you asked them to move to EV.
On peak times, popular long routes get over 2000 cars per hour. We're talking 100s of thousands, if not millions, of this need coming up per year, so its hardly an edge case.
This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case. Assuming you take one trip a day, then you’re literally only hitting that case 2/365 days.
Obviously there’s people where this doesn’t apply, but there’s outliers everywhere and they’re free to continue buying gas cars today.
> This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case.
I humbly beg to disagree; it's most definitely not an edge-case as the phrase is defined.
You're using "edge-case" to mean low-frequency event. How I see the phrase used everywhere I've ever seen it, is "edge case" referring to a low-probability event, i.e. an event that is predicted to so rarely occur that it can be dismissed from consideration.
>> an extreme or not typical example of something, that should not be considered when forming an opinion about it:
An annual trip is an almost guaranteed event, so it's a very high probability event. I get that it is a low-frequency event, but "edge-case" is the incorrect term used to describe the event. Use "rarely" or similar instead.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Yes, but in life, many of the most meaningful things are the edge cases. That's what makes them special. If people don't statistically have many dinner parties, then the dinner parties they do have might be even more special. This is life, not a statistical model.
Those meaningful edge cases can still happen. You don't need to own, store, and maintain the equipment for them year-round for this.
In fact, I would argue that the edge cases feel even more special when you rent. For instance, my family rented a large passenger van for a road trip. The van itself became a sort of icon of that trip, and the source of distinct memories.
Yes, but it often depends more on specific social dynamics, rather than a cost-benefit analysis.
"Hey, you have a car, let's go do XYZ" doesn't happen to people who don't have a car. Replace 'car' with whatever else as appropriate. These social factors drive human decision making to a large degree. People might care about what others think, they might care about spontaneity, they might be influenced by their own desires and the desires of people around them.
Or consider the dinner party example. Sure, I've had dinner parties in rented spaces. It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.
> It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.
Yeah. Let's put the kids to bed while we continue our meal. Oops, forgot to rent a crèche. Want to stay over and continue chatting? Oops, forgot to rent a hotel and the space closes at 11:00.
Do this enough - like I did renting cars for roadtrips - and you Will have both good and bad memories. I have been doing this for 5 years and for every "that was such a fun drive for us" there is a "we needed something spacious and we got a compact city Suv because they screwed up our booking and there were no alternatives" kind of stories. Or "we got an X5 with a steering wheel making funny noises" or "we ended up getting a hybrid with a very small trunk" or "the car started smelling funny a few hours into the ride" or "they got us a car with a slow leak in a tire". And when that happens, its sometimes enough to suck all the fun from your rare vacation and it costs a lot of time to get a new rental, in relation to the time you have at your disposal. Its also not really cheap. I owned a range rover before deciding on switching to EV plus rentals combo and my total costs of using a car stayed at the same level.
I'm extremely confident that our guest bedroom that sits empty most of the year has increased the # of family visits we get by a whole lot. It's still mostly empty and it's true they could stay in a hotel, but they feel welcome, they have a place they can make their home, and it's just less commitment and planning.
If you're middle age and only see your family once or twice year when you visit them on holidays, it's sobering to make a guess as to how many more times you'll see them in your life.
I'm guessing my empty guest bedroom that might as well be replaced by a hotel visit has doubled the number of high quality visits I'll have with some family members.
Why? Do the life choices of other individuals really cause you that much harm? I could see being annoyed that they're _marketed_ into over sized solutions that aren't actually correct for their use case, but to just be annoyed that other people appear to enjoy prosperity as an edge case is unusual to my way of thinking.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Similarly, and sorry to do this in reverse, but why do you think that is? Marketing, experience, habitual, unfairly priced?
> need
Anyways, personally, I'm more annoyed that corporations get to do this kind of edge case thinking. Shifting the growing of food, the use of labor, and the capital markets they sell to around in pernicious ways simply to add a few points to a publicly traded stock. Then using these profit streams to purchase selfish legislation and reduced taxes all to grease the wheels of this odd machine. Then we're all expected to accept a reduced quality experience just to paper over their decades of environmental abuse? That is madness.
> I could see being annoyed that they're _marketed_ into over sized solutions that aren't actually correct for their use case
Yeah, it's really not the thing itself that's annoying. It's just knowing that it's an unconventional opinion and I'm not going to change anyone's minds on it and I better just keep it to myself to be polite. Not the end of the world of course, but slightly frustrating.
If I were writing the post again, I'd definitely take the 'annoying' sentence out of it.
> I'd definitely take the 'annoying' sentence out of it.
I think it's right to be annoyed. It's an important issue, but I'm a fan of regular people, in general, and I always try to offer a defense of them at the expense of corporation whenever possible.
> It's just knowing that it's an unconventional opinion and I'm not going to change anyone's minds
You're a bit of a hipster. No shame in that. My argument comes from the same place, and wasn't phrased to target you, but to withstand HN.
Is it really so bad to say that a lot of people should do certain things differently than they do? Like, if I said more Americans should get more exercise and eat less junk food, would that be a horrible thing for me to say?
The fact that you're equating your opinion on this to health advice shows your disdain for the perfectly reasonable opinions of others. Your thoughts on this are not the one truth in the matter.
Honestly, some self-reflection may be in order here.
> you're equating your opinion on this to health advice
No I'm not, I'm using health as an example of a general principle.
Anyways, as I've said up-thread, the 'kind of annoying' thing is referring to the feeling of having any unconventional opinion that is better to keep to yourself (except on HN where such things are slightly more tolerated).
It's not that other people are annoying because they like other things than I do, or whatever the current straw man is.
I have a 200 mile range EV, which is to say a practical range of 120-160. It's great for running around the bay area. It's not so great for the monthly travel I do going 500-2000 miles in a stretch because stopping every 120-160 miles for anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours is mind-numbing, and that doesn't even account for the mercurial state of the national charging network. It's also not so great in places less friendly to EVs. I'm upgrading to a 400 mile range EV down the road and I hope the charging network upgrades itself as well because it still sucks.
I'll believe it when I see it. I lost a great deal of faith in EVs when the local dealer refused to service mine because I didn't buy it from them. On the bright side, Ford gave me a 5-year extended warranty to make up for their behavior, but WTF?
Lived that when I blew my Class B RV's transmission in Crescent City, CA on the 101 (Van life! Van life! #PortlandiaReference). I was going to be stuck there for a month waiting for parts until I galaxy brained my way out of it by getting my car towed to a dealer in Medford, OR and bought an EV there for below cost the same day, the first EV the dealer had ever sold hence the discount.
That accountant driving to Lowes twice a year to pick up mulch, finds out he's missing a shovel or a reticulation fitting or something unexpected. The pickup truck is a solid work horse in new edge cases.
There's nothing worse than finding out that your hatchback can't fit a ladder you needed to buy because you broke off a section of the gutter when you tried to pull a broken branch off your roof.
A guest bedroom is often extra storage, kids sleep-over room and a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it. The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner.
Just saying the edge cases cover more outcomes than direct use.
I've had family over and ended up turning rooms into temporary bedrooms.
Basically, these things happen rarely enough that it is not such a crisis to put a little effort and adapt to them.
Whereas the drag of being prepared for every situation all the time is constant.
> a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it.
This is true.
> The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner.
I don't think you can just flat-out say this. The opportunity cost of an unused room is pretty terrific.
It might be bearable if you're wealthy, but most people are not. It also might be bearable if you LOVE hosting, can't get enough of it, it's what gets you up in the morning, but for most people it's not.
So you just stating that it's worth it without any further justification is actually an example of my point which is how the opportunity costs of these things are routinely ignored.
When that edge case makes for an absolutely terrible experience of driving across North Dakota in 0F weather and having to stop every 150 miles then you definitely don’t forget that pain when buying your next car.
Usually renting is an easy workaround. For instance you can rent a private room at a pub for your yearly gathering. Or rent heavy equipment when you need it for your garden.
It sounds like you have actually considered the options, weighed them against your own tastes and preferences, multiplied by the number of times you expect to host, etc., and come to that conclusion. So you are not who I was talking about.
I was more talking people like my family members who insisted that the must have a dining room in their next house, even though they don't use the one they have now.
Just the fact that you acknowledged that other options exist puts you ahead of many.
One of things is not like the other. Gardening can happen anytime, but gatherings happen on holidays, so the party space you describe is already booked or closed for the holiday.
Your argument is the same as saying most people that live in cities don't actually need a car at all - just use public transport and perhaps hire a car for those odd occasions where you really need one.
I lived in a city for a decade without a car - and did exactly that - but when I had children - I found I needed both more certainty and more flexibility for my travel - so I got a car.
Don't underestimate those aspects - range impacts that flexibility ( not just range on a single journey, but cumulative range over a number of journeys without charging ).
Availability of charging points impacts both flexibility & certainty.
These are real concerns.
Range and charging are of course linked - if charging was easily available and very quick then range on one charge ceases to be much of an issue. If the range from a single charge is massive, then frequency of charge points is less of an issue.
So the good news is any improvement on either has a synergistic effect.
From a programming perspective, "edge cases", are actually failure modes. A single failure can be extremely expensive and wipe out years of marginal benefit that was accrued by ignoring them.
I'm not sure I can think of a strong argument for consciously living your life in a way which ignores potential failure modes, unless you're pretty sure you've projected the hidden costs and are prepared at any moment to pay them.
The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.
If you've actually multiplied the likelihood by the costs & benefits of the different options and come to that conclusion that's fine.
There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
> The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.
Wait, what? It costs like $50 to rent a pickup truck from Lowes. You don't have to hire somebody just because you're renting the truck. Driving a larger vehicle probably costs most people that much in gas costs alone in one month.
idk. I pay $250 a month on loan for a car the size of a piñata, which goes fast and holds absolutely no cargo. I'm sure I've spent at least $2k on edge cases in the past few years renting or hiring when I had to move heavy objects on interstate journeys. Spread that out monthly, I could have saved money on a truck. Heck, I coulda bought a truck cheaper than my car. In my own calculation it's not worth it (because I don't want to drive a truck).
>> There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
I disagree here, because again you need to divide the probability by the severity of the consequences and only then rank the priorities. A $500k house on the side of a volcano that only erupts every thousand years is substantially different from the same house on a prairie, because the chance of total annihilation measurably increases the volatility of your bet. In gambling parlance, "risk of ruin". Once you see a possible risk of ruin you need to avoid it. I'll tell you why. Imagine that you had thought of it and discarded it as wildly unlikely. You did nothing to mitigate or plan for it. And a year later, it happened. You'd feel pretty stupid. You'd wish you had never even imagined it.
I didn't initially want to bring this up as an example, but it was actually the first on my mind: I live in a dangerous neighborhood. Some nights I fall halfway asleep without remembering to take my gun out of the safe and put it next to my bed. I look at the clock; it's 5am; it's probably fine; I don't want to get up. Then I think, imagine if ten minutes after I make this decision some guy breaks in and points a gun at me, how stupid I'd feel.
0.1 per cent vs. 2 per cent both look like a banal edge, but it is a 20:1 difference. If you do something 0.1 per cent of the time, you spend 1 day in 3 years doing so. If you do something 2 per cent of the time, you spend 1 week every year doing so.
Also, it matters what the consequences are. I spent nontrivial money securing my home from potential burglary, because I just don't want to experience it, ever. I don't have a guest bedroom, but your example with the hotel down the street actually assumes that there is a hotel down the street; what if the closest hotel is five miles away and taxi services are unreliable?
Etc.
I get that some people overspend, but the original topic was range, and in a country like the US, with its vast rural regions, a lack of chargers on some trips may be a serious concern.
Needing to drive extended distances is not an "edge case" in this country but something that the vast, vast majority of the population does on a regular basis.
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Edge cases can mean life and death sometimes. Is my vehicle going to get stuck in an emergency if no one plows snow on a 1 mile stretch of unpaved road between my home and the major road?
If unrest/war/natural disaster happens and major infrastructure is non functional can I pack my family in to my car and just go 3k miles without worrying about charging infrastructure? You can just siphon fuel from other vehicles. Good luck doing that with an electric car (especially with some random half destroyed car dumped on the side of the road).
Edge cases may not matter much for daily life, but when they become important, they are really important.
Also, there is one thing regulators (and car makers) could do to make EVs a lot more interesting for everyone. A compatible modular batteries. Why were standardised batteries invented (AAA etc?)? So you can swap them yourself even if rechargeable. Imagine your Tesla, a Mercedes eqe or VW ev had their battery as a number of 10/5kWh user replaceable units? Perhaps you can't afford, or you don't need a 120kWh battery pack, so you buy a new car with 20kWh only. You could benefit from a car lighter by few hundred kg and you could buy the rest later (assuming total capacity was 100kWh let's say).
Then, on an old car, you could put new battery modules, or you could keep them when selling your car to stick in a new one.
It is an obvious thing to do, why are regulators not even talking about it? Would you rather have a single, horribly expensive part in which tiny element fails and the whole vehicle is essentially scrap value, or am ability to swap it part by part? If we're in any way serious about EVs being a true replacement for Ice cars, and not just a toy for wealthy people to feel better they need user replaceable batteries.
Which one is ridiculous? It seems regardless which part of the world you live in at least one is applicable. For me it happens to be war, for others it may be natural disasters or civil unrest. Tell all the raped/burned corpses in Bahmut they are in fact still alive and their existence is capitalist propaganda.
Why is it annoying? What you need is very subjective. Before I had a family I had no idea I'd want a guest room because I'd want extended family to stay. And when they stay in a hotel they spend way less time with us. I'm glad I live in a society where I can choose to spend my money and decide the trade offs for myself.
I disagree with your general statement because the edge case is entirely dependent on the individual circumstances. Let me provide some examples:
I have two ovens purely so I can host Christmas Day. 99% of the time that second oven is unused but it massively reduces the stress of that one day. It was worth every penny.
I own an MPV so I can take my bicycle to races/events. I can hire a car for the purpose but the flexibility and reduced stress of that 3/4 times a year (plus I can use it for other things) makes it worth it.
That's not to say all edge cases are justified. Some are silly, such as owning a pickup truck, which pollutes like crazy and is inconvenient as fuck for parking. Other things like buying an expensive machine for a job you'll do once (just hire it or pay someone to do it, you'll save money).
All I'm saying is you can't generalise from the specific cases.
When planning for the scale of a new system, do you plan for the worst case or best case? Which method would create a more resilient system?
Put another way, if a service can only respond to 93% if requests, I wouldn't call it a very well architected service. EVs have a long way to go for many people.
I’m willing to bet you do the exact same thing. The vast majority of people drive alone every day, and only occasionally have passengers. Do you have a passenger seat? A back seat? A trunk? If so, you’re buying for the edge cases, not the average, and you’re not special.
I would not consider my having a trunk as being an edge case as I use it weekly. Back seat less so, but still quite often. But if I didn't, I probably wouldn't choose a car that had them (assuming such options were available)
I think you're interpreting it wrong. Edge-cases matter a lot for quality of life, as some other comments illustrated well.
The solutions to these edge-cases don't need to be solved by the same thing that solves your average case though. Give me a fleet of large cars that I can rent whenever I have a long-distance drive, and maybe I'll consider not even owning a car.
The edge case I’m worried about is travel time during the holidays. Between LA and Phoenix is a desolate stretch of freeway running through a small number of essentially truck stop towns. The most isolated one, Quartzite, has an enormous Tesla supercharging station, which just doubled in the last year. It’s virtually essential to stop in Quartzite on the drive in a Tesla. I made that drive a week after Thanksgiving, and the new Tesla superchargers are behind a brand new gas station. While stopping, I asked the clerk how the wait was during Thanksgiving, and he indicated that it was through the roof. Now, Quartzite and its grid can currently handle the peak Tesla traffic between LA and Phoenix on the busiest holiday travel weekend, with significant wait time, but can it handle the 100x increase required for full electrification? I’m skeptical. And the we have square miles of essentially idle chargers outside of this peak travel period? Seems wasteful. How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns? New huge transmission lines to these isolated towns? Diesel generators? Tesla power packs?
> How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns?
Like petrol station: charge some reservoir batteries during off hours and then you're able to discharge this energy fast. The problem then is the energy density of batteries making it so you'd need a gigantic battery / capacitor to replace a lot smaller fuel tank.
Now you’ve got to have a 75KW of grid storage available for these peak use cases for every car.
Quartzite currently has 120 charging spaces. 100x increase boosts that to 12,000 spaces. That’s all the parking at the Mall of America. Mind boggling. 150KW for each spot, and that’s 1.8GW of power. To put it in perspective, one of the three Palo Verde reactors produces just 1.4GW. Mind blowing.
I agree. Although part of the challenge is that people are accustomed to jumping in their car for a roadtrip without thinking twice about their vehicle’s range. Once you’ve upgraded your lifestyle for the convenience of “not thinking about it”, well it’s hard to go back.
The “edge” cases in life are what many people live for. Tho, in the car scenario, it can definitely be handled by renting what you need when you need it.
A hotel is not a replacement for people staying with you. You do not get the same intimacy.
You don't need to purchase, maintain, and store the equipment for those edge cases to happen. You can rent them. In fact, that makes them even more special.
5 years ago I spent 20K on a second hand Merc that I love driving. At the time, hybrids let alone electrical were way more expensive than a diesel car.
I'll be damned if I have to spend 50K on a car that doesn't even get me to the south of France in a day. Yeah, I only take long road trips a few times a year but if I do, I want to be able to do it in my expensive car.
It's like buying a top spec macbook pro but if you want to edit video even once or twice a year, you got to rent another computer.
You heat an indoor, that you leave for many hours regularly. Also you put fridge in heated room to make food cold even though outside could be same temperature asi in your fridge.
I make a 7-hour, ~600 mile trip 3-4 times a year. Most of that trip is through very rural areas in the Southeast, and I’m generally doing this at the end of the year (cold temps), or in the heat of summer, when batteries have the least range. It does seem like the next generation of batteries will be where I need them in the next year or so, but I’m also not going to spend $50k on a mid-tier vehicle, so we’ll see.
A guest bedroom isn't so guests can stay at a hotel. A guest bedroom is so I have a room I can offer people unconditionally if they need it due to a crisis. The situations in which this happens are hopefully never but they do arise, and the value of it is that it is in my house, with me and not at a hotel where I am not.
I like that you didn't tackle the actual "need" you're trying to criticize, namely the need for a car which is compatible with road trips.
For some people, it would look like this:
> We need a car which can take us to our vacation home
(goes to vacation home once per year, it's unreachable by train or bus
and in a location where having a car is important; they could just rent
out a rental car for a month for a billion dollars instead of having a car
which can be used for the trip)
That's the reality a bunch of people are looking at.
Granted, for a bunch of other people, taking one or two stops to recharge at well-maintained and nice charging stations along the way would suffice. But as I'm sure you're aware, that's not the universal experience with recharging EVs along the way yet.
From my perspective, your example of a yearly month-long vacation to a personal vacation home is unthinkably extravagent, and anyone in that situation is rich enough not to worry about the inefficiencies I am talking about (from a personal finance POV I mean. From an environmental standpoint it is an abomination)
What part of it is "unthinkably extravagant"? Having a vacation home isn't very uncommon, 4 weeks of vacation in a year isn't uncommon. You don't need to be stupidly rich to be in the situation I described, you just need to 1) have had enough spare money or luck ant some point to end up with a vacation home (inherited or otherwise), 2) not have severe enough financial trouble in the present to sell it, and 3) value it enough to prioritize it over the benefits of selling it.
I'm in Norway, so that probably skews my perception a bit. I'd say it's almost more common than not to have some vacation home in the family, and 4 weeks of paid holiday is the legally mandated minimum.
I see your point, people do overvalue edge cases. At the same time people also undervalue edge cases, think health insurance.
> We need a dining room for when we have parties
(Our community group needs a friendly reliable place to meet weekly)
> We need a guest bedroom
(My in-laws hit hard times, they need a safe place, now)
> I need a pickup truck
(I get to help out my friends with their projects and when their pressed to move)
And
> I need long range to take the semiannual road trip
(There was an earthquake/hurricane/flood/tornado/(in many counties /civil disturbance) and I need to move my family/haul supplies now)
I have plenty more examples, and I doubt I'd ever have a dining room for example, but I have personally benefited from each of the above. Edge cases can make or break lives. Just look at software people rely on.
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Spending dozens of thousands on a personal people mover I would like it to enable and expand my freedoms. I.e. supporting painless weekend road trips. Fossil fuel cars answer this requirement, EVs don't.
For the extremely constrained happy path of commute in urban areas it is much more efficient to develop public transport. Living in a city with developed public transport I'd rather take the train than drive an EV to get to the same destination.
My wife loves to craft and to stich and make clothes - the dining room gets used as a cutting, crafting table as the porch room where she sits during winter is too hot during summer.
I guess this is a cultural dependent thing as well. In Mediterranean cultures I believe the preparation of the dinner (in a dinner party) would often be part of the social event.
The first 2 are not so silly as these "unused rooms" can have other functionality. The dining room becomes an office, or a retreat. In a crisis this extra capacity could be accommodation for an out of luck friend or relative, or rent out the room.
The 3rd one might be more silly :-)
I agree people should consider how much of an edge case it is though, and make a good decision. Even if "well it is an edge case but what the hell". Owning a Christmas tree ain't so bad.
The 'annoying' part of my comment was not well thought out on my part, and I would take it back if I could. I guess that what is annoying is being in the situation of having opinions like that which are unconventional.
Buying stuff we don't need because of far-fetched edge cases creates insane amounts of pollution.
Most of those far-fetched edge cases have simple solutions (such as renting).
I can't count the massive amount of stuff we have at home and don't use at all despite my active pushing against those, literally everybody I know is in the same situation.
I find it hilarious that this comment was written just three years after the height of COVID closures.
During that time I was so happy to have access to my home gym, to have a spare bedroom we could turn into an office, etc.
You're welcome to make the personal bet that a pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it's amazingly self-righteous to criticize others who prepare for edge cases.
The entire point of ownership is to hedge against right-tail demand scenarios. If you don't care about them, you should just rent everything and own nothing at all. "Own nothing and be happy", as they say. You will just occasionally find yourself screwed when demand is high.
Probably we should let people decide for themselves what level of hedging is appropriate.
So what am I supposed to do, never host my friends or family? Never go on road trips?
2 to 4 times a year is a hell of a lot more often than "never". If I can only afford one car, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs? If I can only buy one house, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs?
X meter tsunami waves -> nuclear reactor barrier walls
X days without replenishing vital supplies -> warehouses and buffers.
I loath to think how many bad decisions are made because someone decided "three stdev" is good enough because they don't even know what a long tail is.
On the pickup truck example — maybe the person only buys mulch a few times a year, but the person has the capabilities of the truck all year. When I lived in the U.S., I had a home backup generator. Only really become useful once or twice, but when it was useful, it was extremely useful. Certainly one could instead rent a generator right? Except you don’t necessarily know when you’ll need it and that’s assuming there are even places from which to rent when you need it.
A pickup truck is a vehicle you can use every day that also has the capability of additional utility — you don’t lose everyday utility because it’s a pickup truck, but you have additional utility that’s there when you need it.
Why do most people own suitcases? Why not rent those when you need them? Why do people own skis? Or anything else that has occasional use?
In Spain, I drive a big diesel van. When I bought it, many commercial vehicle dealerships were pushing the electric version — for my daily driving which involves transporting motorcycles to the race tracks roughly 1.5 hours away, an electric would work, but the 10 times per year I have to drive across Spain for races, electric would be a nightmare — drive several hours, potentially towing a trailer then having to stop for hours to recharge? That turns a one-day 9 hour drive into a two day drive. Barcelona to Jerez for example. That also assumes that chargers are ideally spaced along the route and that time while I’m waiting for the van to charge? That’s wasted time. Then there is the matter of daily charging — parking in the Barcelona area, especially for a van isn’t easy. And finding a charging spot available that’s close to home would be an exercise in luck. Even if there were an order of magnitude more chargers, there’d presumably be an order of magnitude more EVs to compete with.
Then there is the question of weight — a large van requires large batteries which makes the weight of the vehicle substantially more than diesel — that means either a bigger vehicle is required or I get less payload. And driver licensing is based on weight.. so the EV version of my Crafter van would either mean I carry less (not an option,) or I have to move up to a higher weigh class which would require a commercial license.
While my personal situation is an “edge case,” the fact is that everyone’s life consists of their own version of edge cases. That’s the point of the free market — we can optimize around our own edge cases. The problem is when do-gooders are reductive, trying to fit everyone into a box based on what they think their needs should be rather than what they are.
You are pretending that owning a truck doesn't have a downside compared to a normal car or a station wagon. The truck will use more fuel and is way less nice to drive if you not in a very rural region. Which is why driving a truck instead of a car is mostly a US thing.
And yes, if the bottom line is, you want to own a truck, by all means by one.
Absolutely. I drive a small two seat convertible, and I could just as easily go without it on account of taxis, friends cars, rentals, home delivery, etc. And in many cases, I do rely on those.
I don't think it is edge cases as much as aspirations and pretence.
To take your examples, I want a large dining room and guest bed because they signal popularity and I can imagine all those people coming over. I also want a pickup because I can tell myself that I'll weather the next zombie apocalypse, or I'll imagine transporting building materials back home and build that outside sauna my now divorced wife always wanted. That will show her. Or something.
You can tell who these people, they say things like: "I don't mind waiting an hour to charge every 300 miles because I have to use the bathroom and stretch my legs".
That's all well and good when you are on a long trip once a year. It's unfathomable to stop that often, for that long, when traveling regularly.
> I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where this is possible and all, but it's kind of annoying.
You don't, you live in one that took a huge loan against the future and counts on dying before it needs to be paid. The kind of environmental and socoetal damage caused by these kinds of inefficiencies is immeasurable.
If you had a dining room, maybe you'd throw parties more often than every two years. We use ours every Thanksgiving and Christmas at a minimum. It's also a great place to simply eat dinner without retreating to one's bedroom.
Same with guests; people aren't going to visit you if they have to pay for a hotel, and have to travel from the hotel back to your house for breakfast in the dining room you don't have.
My town doesn't even have a hotel. You'd have to go to the neighboring city. The hotel is on the side of a mountain overlooking the river, which makes it hard to get to. About 20 minutes away is 20 minutes too far when everyone is exhausted and drunk at the end of the party. First to bed gets the spare bedroom, and the last one up crashes on the couch. In a pinch, a cot can be put in the dining room.
A spare bedroom is also an excellent location for a home office. Having extra rooms is capital. It greatly increases the quality of one's life, every day. You might as well say you don't need a kitchen. You don't really need to cook when you can get all your food prepared from outside, in our prosperous society. While technically true (there exist apartments without kitchens), it is an austere standard to live by.
You're getting flak for this, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in Europe from what I see. Especially the car part. Almost everybody drives small cars. Pickup trucks that don't have a company name on them are as rare as exotic cars.
I disagree.
The sustainable alternative to EVs is hybrids, not gas guzzlers.
Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter.
Heavier cars cause significantly higher road wear [1], particulate pollution [2] and occupy more space. EVs by necessity, are heavier. This is especially evident in America's favorite product categories : SUVs and Trucks. The Ford- F150 lightning is 1.5x heavier than its gas powered brother.
Mazda is able to fit in a hybrid rotary [3] range-extender in the MX-30 REV, saving about 800 lbs from having a smaller battery. The rotary only serves as battery charger, so you get all the benefits of an EV and none of its negatives.
Full-EVs are solving a problem that doesn't need solving. I respect them as a premium market segment option. But, massively subsidizing them with a 8000$ tax credit & virtue signaling makes no sense. The infrastructure is decades out from being there. There will be an eventual transition to EVs over the next 30 years as energy density and grid issues are solved. But, we should wait for it to happen organically.
They are much fewer, and they do tend to have different travel patterns than other vehicles, and there is an equivalent average daily traffic for truck traffic where you convert each truck into a large number of other vehicles.
When you do that, the wear due to truck traffic still absolutely dominates almost always.
So, a 2 ton car is 1 unit of damage; a fully loaded 18 wheeler is 20,000 units. On top of that, we expect a 30 mile/day drive from the car, but more like 300+ from the truck. So, throwing in mileage:
car = 30 units
truck = 6 million units
If trucks are just 1% of the vehicles on the road, they'd still be 99.9% of the damage.
Volume does not matter, same with routes. You could probably reduce it to the following, passenger vehicles do no damage to roads. If a road is only driven on my passenger cars it will probably succumb to age/weather damage before weight.
I doubt there is any sustainable alterntive to a privately owned two-ton vehicle that is also a privately owned two-ton vehicle. They're all just incredibly inefficient, and pollute in their own way.
> Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter.
EVs do not affect the grid as much as you would think, and might even benefit the grid once vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home technology (+corresponding economic incentives) becomes more common. Think about it: right now we have enormous amounts of battery storage, sitting idle most of the time, that has already been paid for.
Most people do not charge their EV from empty to full every day, most people aren't using DC fast charging and not during peak hours. Most days the average EV owner probably drives 30 km and charges that amount at home, overnight.
There are probably millions of electric ovens/stovetops in any given country. If they were all turned on at the same time, it would definitely overload the electrical grid. But this doesn't happen, because of their sheer number. We can safely assume each oven will use a fraction of its rated power on average, possibly with a small peak when the average person gets off work.
From my experience, having an EV for daily driving actually changes the electrical consumption less than the months where the pool motor is on. Which makes sense since the pool motor runs all the time (even if it's dual speed).
I disagree. The sustainable alternative is to get an EV for 98% of the time and rent a purpose-built vehicle for the edge cases whether those edge cases are for long distance, towing, or hauling.
Let the rental companies keep and maintain the gas cars.
I agree, but most people don't want to think that way.
Plugin hybrids are a great answer for those people, but they're not buying those either. I mean, roughly 90% of car trips in the US are under 30 miles roundtrip. Therefore, nearly every PHEV is designed to handle 30 miles of fully electric driving. That means they are an EV 90% of the time for the average consumer.
The problem is, most consumers don't understand this so when they see that a PHEV only has 30 miles of range they think that's absurd when most of the time it's actually more than enough. Of course there are outliers and people who they wouldn't be right for, but we're just talking about most people.
I would love to drive a PHEV, but the math just doesn't work out. They're $10-$20k more than the ICE equivalent. At best I'm going to save like $1000 a year on gas.
You're right about the math. I don't blame you for making the decision based on the cost difference, but not everyone makes a car buying decision that way so it's important to point out the other benefits for the folks who are willing to pay more for those other benefits.
With the monetary and opportunity cost of renting (hassle, unpredictability, risk) it makes sense very very quickly to just own an ICE car for the predictable edge cases.
Have you rented a car recently? It’s a nightmare half the time.
In engineering I’d call that a high risk single point of failure.
There is no fundamental reason for car rental to be that awful.
App-based free floating rental cars (think e-scooters, but with actual cars) are ubiquitous in large German cities and work extremely well. There are usually several free cars within a 5 minute walking distance, and booking one takes less than 30s. You can even pre-book a car the day before, and the company will bring it close to your home (if necessary), and reserve it for you.
The classical rental car experience (AVIS and co.) is comically bad in comparison.
Not sure about Germany but in London Zipcar are almost comically expensive. Basic Vauxhall Corsa for £85/day, plus an upfront joining fee. Pricing up a random week in Feb, I could rent a similar car from a traditional hire company for a whole week for less than £70.
Avis was fine the 1 and only time I used it. Car was ready waiting for me in the parking lot. Just hop in they said. Keys inside. Quick check at the gate and that's it
Most of my car rental experiences are like that one Seinfeld episode. I reserve car X, and when I get there, they say they don't have car X (that they allowed me to reserve) but I can use car Y. Sometimes it doesn't matter at all, especially if they're going to pay for the gas. But it does bother me that I want a Honda Civic and walk out with a Dodge Charger or Ford F250.
What are you talking about? If car rental is your nightmare, you frankly haven't lived.
I rented a Toyota Rav for a road trip from Seattle the SW for 12 days. $700 plus fuel and done. That hyperbolic math you haven't done doesn't check out.
So you are telling me, that for a car with a 30k MSRP, instead of renting it once a year for 700$ for a road trip, I should purchase it outright... Because of unpredictability and risk? Millions of people rent cars every day. Maybe your hassle tolerance is infinitesimally low?
The last time we rented a car, they refused to give us any car. We had paid over $400 already. There were no other rental options anywhere. My father had to drive 14 hours round trip to pick up my family.
But yeah, I’m sure renting cars is always just perfect and never a nightmare.
That’s precisely what they did. It was a one-way rental paid for on the Hertz website, and the local guy didn’t want to give up the car. So he refused.
When I called Hertz about it, they said they had no authority over the local agents. When I press them on it, they hung up on me.
Of course there are other parts to the story. But you have the salient facts.
What I'm pretty sure happened is that rental cars were in high demand for quite a while after Covid, and the local office didn't want to lose a car. (One way rental away from a small market, means there's not much of a chance of somebody delivering a car one-way back to that location anytime soon. So that means they have to pay to get a car shipped in from another market.) So they refused to give the car up.
If you want to hear the excuse the local agent originally gave it was that the rental was in my wife's name but the card it was paid for was my MIL's card. It was my wife who went in to get the car at first. But when both my wife and MIL went in to get the car, he still refused to give up the car, and stated that he wouldn't rent them a car.
So you can believe whatever you want about how I'm hiding things in the story. Believe me, if I spent the time to tell the whole story, it wouldn't reflect poorly on us, but only make Hertz look much, much worse.
Is it that hard to believe that a consumer had a bad experience with a rental company? I mean, seriously... have you ever watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles? It's only funny because so many people have experienced it. I'm not the only one in this thread citing a nightmare experience with a car rental.
A couple I am friends with tried to rent a car in NYC the day before Thanksgiving. Reserved a car online in advance, got to the rental place, only to be told that no vehicles were available. So instead of a car, they had to take the only form of transportation they could arrange at the last minute: the Megabus. Which is always fun with a small baby and luggage.
As I understand, theirs is a fairly common post-pandemic car rental experience.
It does decrease the amount of trips you take, to be fair. It doesn't have to, but it does.
Also, renting is a pain. I used to rent 6-10 times a year and about 50% of the time you'd get what you asked for, or had to run to an airport for better selection. I'd ask for a subcompact and they'd give me a van, vice versa...
Driving your own car is comfortable, especially if you have been driving it for a while. I especially want my car, that I know, on a long distance trip.
Especially now that UI design of cars has started to follow the experimental churn of the mobile phone industry instead of following most established designs everyone is familiar with.
Seriously, I am very surprised how resistant people are to it. When I was younger my dad had a big car and all year he would drive it by himself to work, but we ”needed” this big car once a year to go on family vacation and then filled that car to the brim for this one trip. It would have made so much more sense to just have a small commuter car for his daily commute and then just rent a gigantic car once a year for the family trip that could actually hold all our stuff.
Because for most people, the edge case trips are holiday ones. Which a lot of people tend to have at the same time: so try renting a vehicle when everyone needs one.
I agree and more or less live this way, but it doesn't work for everyone or everywhere. In order to be able to easily and cost efficiently rent a car you need the right infrastructure.
Totally agree. Hybrid still make a lot of sense and It's a real shame most brands released half-baked hybrids and jumped straight to EVs, other brands never even bothered with hybrids. I drive a Volvo XC40 PHEV and I can go a whole month without running the engine, I only do so on long trips or idle it for fluids to run through it. And it only added $20 to my electricity bill (not living in the US).
I'd really like to see a plug-in hybrid pickup where I can do 10-20 miles on a charge without needing the gas engine to even kick on. I get that by the time you put all that infrastructure in, an engineer starts asking why we don't just omit the ICE and add batteries for range... but I think there is an unmet need. That would allow me to do at least 50-70% of my miles all electric.
I do quite a lot of truck stuff: 2-3 major construction projects a year, gathering / transporting multiple cords of firewood at various stages annually, commercial landscaping, driving forestry roads for engineering work and hunting, etc. And I have a motorcycle that works a lot of the time for commuting needs. BUT, I also have kids and so I do end up needing a passenger vehicle, a need which is unfortunately filled by my truck since my wife has to also commute.
There is no way an electric vehicle would allow me to do the stuff I do. My truck offers 385 miles of range, and I usually carry enough extra fuel to get double that when I go into some extremely remote locations where there will simply NEVER be charge infrastructure. And I absolutely need it sometimes. I saw some poor guy driving that road get stuck in a Tesla out in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what that guy was thinking but he ended up getting towed out after failing to get a charge off of a gas generator after running it for 8 hours. It's bad fire country out there and he's very lucky that wasn't a concern at the time.
Hybrids are indeed really neat but I think your math is off.
Yes EVs are heavier but 1,000lbs more is not causing the type of wear to roads that you think it is. Model y is something like 4,300lbs. Max load capacity of a semi is 80,000lb distributed across multiple axles. Most trucks are probably not loaded to max but I could see the axle weight hitting 20k lbs.
Heavier vehicles are definitely going to need heavier compound tires or potentially cause more wear on the tires. I don't think tires is a worthy argument. Even a Hybrid is going to be consuming tires and then you are going to have to get into the argument of which is the lesser evil, potentially increased tire wear or increased point of use pollution.
The grid is just fine. Most charging happens at night and EVs have the potential to reall help out the grid. There is a large push for smarter home devices to min/max use depending on the grid condition. In times of overgeneration, EVs can soak up that energy.
And yet millions of people who don't work in those industries chose F150s. You can't solve the climate problem by telling people what they should want.
And yet that's exactly why they got this vehicle in the first place, because of some tax rebates on larger vehicles. Somebody else already chose it for them.
Pigouvian taxes also work in the car industry and this industry isn't that special.
Range extenders probably aren't what you expect - You still have to charge.
For example the bmw i3 range extender won't let you drive on gas. It will put charge in the battery while you are driving or stopped, but it won't generate nearly enough power to keep up with freeway driving.
Other hybrids are basically ICE cars that can capture a little power and feed it back.
and hybrids have twice the complexity - all of ICE + all of EV.
The complexity is the killer for me. I think with the advances in efficient (>90%) propane synthesis and direct fuel cells, we will see some fuel cell hybrids to give the fuel cells time to warm up. But even then, the extra complexity is very high.
Honestly; as a guy who traded in his pickup for an EV - I won't buy a Hybrid. Too many moving parts and performance is generally crap until you get into price ranges I'm not willing to pay.
Re: Range - ~250 miles is perfectly fine for me and mine 99% of the time. I haven't paid for charging since (checking...) July 2023. Roughly 6mo. Else, we take the Mrs 600mile range SUV the 1-2x/year it would be awkward to take my car.
If my wifes car died today? I have absolutely no idea what I'd replace it with. Dailying an EV for ~4 years now, I'm not sure I'd be ok going purely EV household yet.
Car fires aren't the a significant enough cause of car crash deaths to matter.
Maintenance seems to be a manufacturer problem more so than a hybrid vs others problem. Toyota Priuses have been the beater Taxi of America for a good decade now. These hybrids are troopers.
If Rivian and Tesla maintenance stories are any indication, Full-EVs seem to be an order of magnitude behind on dealing with problems during the ownership period.
Maintenance has nothing to do with EV vs gas. I have a 2011 Nissan Leaf. Maintenance is keeping the tires inflated and changing the wiper blades. 50k miles and still on its first set of brake pads.
It is even worse for people like me, despite having a charger in my home. I almost never drive short distances, I walk everywhere locally. When I do drive, it is very long distances, and in those cases range and refill time counts for a lot. On their best days EVs have inferior range and in many conditions they have markedly inferior range. Add on top of that the lengthy recharge time (topping off a gas tank is <5 minutes) and it fundamentally changes the logistics of long distance travel in a negative way. I have nothing against the idea of EVs, they are just really inferior for many common driving patterns in the US. Not everyone does 100% of their driving in the suburbs or has the ability to charge at home.
My minimum buying criteria for an EV is simple: high ground clearance, all-wheel drive, and 650+km range with a car full of people and luggage in freezing temperatures. Trivial to buy in a gas car for not much money and essential for many people in the US.
We will know EVs have arrived when Americans in the mountain west start trading their Subarus for Teslas.
> We will know EVs have arrived when Americans in the mountain west start trading their Subarus for Teslas.
No need to get the laggards onboard, you simply need to get to the inflection point where the petroleum supply chain is no longer sustainable (due to demand falling through minimum economic viable throughput). Still at least 10-15 years out, as the US accounts for ~35% global oil consumption. US EV uptake is still too early to see where the weakness is from well to pump, but those Achilles heels will appear eventually. Some consumers may not get the EV they want before they lose the gas stations nearby they have.
That point is so far in the future that I don’t need to consider it. The US is not going to abandon their massive agricultural infrastructure because EVs. As long as significant parts of the US are not readily navigable by EVs 12 months out of the year, and that looks to remain the case for quite some time, there will be plenty of petrol.
I am sure that in 2050 the EVs will be far superior to what we have today. But then again, so will AI etc and most of these discussions may be moot.
I don’t understand what people expect to gain by antagonizing people that cannot drive an EV. It trains them to ignore or oppose the same people on useful climate mitigations that have nothing to do with EVs.
> I don’t understand what people expect to gain by antagonizing people that cannot drive an EV
it's because the people who do this are actually expecting those who cannot drive EVs to sacrifice, in order to drive an agenda (which might be climate change for example).
> drive an agenda (which might be climate change for example).
Calling climate change an agenda is like calling gravity a political position. If you don’t believe in climate change, there is no value in a discussion. If you’re driving a studio apartment on wheels around town, some sacrifice might be required. The future is unlikely to look like the past.
“About a quarter of Americans (23%) think they’ll have to make major sacrifices in their everyday lives because of climate change. A larger share (48%) expects to make minor sacrifices because of climate impacts and 28% of Americans expect to make no sacrifices at all.”
> If you don’t believe in climate change, there is no value in a discussion.
it's not the belief that's in question. It's the actions required.
I, and many others (whether they admit it or not), do not wish to make personal sacrifices to fix climate change, if others are not willing to make the same level of sacrifices (such that relative positioning within society does not change).
I would totally understand if Floridians got really mad at the people who are unwilling to change their lightbulbs to LED ones in order to save their land.
This is a fundamental dynamic of human behaviour. To deny this is detrimental to the goal of reducing climate change and improving the environment we live in.
This is why i think we need global policy changes and regulation to achieve the commonly beneficial goals.
If we wish our species to survive long-term we might need to educate ourselves so that we behave in less selfish ways. I don’t live in Florida, but I am doing my part in saving it (I love my friends who live there).
We can give up, of course, and always assume the worst out of everyone, including us, or we can use whatever tools are within reach to, at least, try to make better humans.
While I agree we aren't the nicest species of primate (that title goes to our cousins, the Bonobos), I also believe a lot of our nastiness can be attributed to nurture rather than nature.
My point is that as individuals we are not OK with making individual sacrifices if the neighbour does not have to. If everyone makes the same sacrifice we are OK with it, see GP's point.
My feeling is that any individual is OK with sacrifice as long as they are not unfairly disadvantaged relavitely to their society/neighbours.
For example: i would not be willing to pay more income tax unless this applied for everyone; even if i wanted higher income taxes.
A good couple Americans living in coastal areas might end up sacrificing living in coastal areas because of climate change. Others who are subject to increasingly frequent extreme weather events might end up sacrificing their current homes in favor of underground bunkers.
The world is changing fast and the Earth does not wait for its population to be ready.
> "it's because the people who do this are actually expecting those who cannot drive EVs to sacrifice, in order to drive an agenda"
There's plenty of good reasons to drive an EV even if you don't care about climate change or the environment. Lower running costs, less maintenance, better reliability, better performance, quieter smoother driving experience, etc.
Besides that, there are significant wider economic benefits from domestically-sourced fuel: money spent on electricity returns to the local economy rather than enriching (often foreign) oil giants, and electricity is much more resilient against fuel price fluctuations caused by wars and oil shocks etc.
So far in the future that you don't need to consider it?
We're already well into the EV adoption S-curve, globally. I think it's worth considering.
Also, I assume by year-round navigability you're referring to snow. I'd point out that Norway has 80% EV adoption, and is covered in snow 6 months out of the year.
There is an extreme cold weather at the moment. This week I’ve taken 200km+ trips in a Model 3 in -20C weather and snow/ice. Besides needing to charge a little more it has been an unremarkable experience.
The convenience of being able to heat up the car before stepping out has been priceless though. I know some ICE cars have it but it’s pretty rare.
Iceland is small. It is smaller than the vast majority of US States. The farthest distances you can travel in Iceland requires not much more than a single charge.
Every major automaker except Stellantis has made an agreement to obtain access to the North American Supercharger network, and there are few coverage gaps evidenced by the map provided above. On highway routes, you’re never more than 30-50 miles to the next Supercharger. Tesla’s standard has been developed by SAE (SAE J3400). Gaps will be filled and density will increase as the EV transition accelerates. Electricity is mostly ubiquitous in the developed world, anywhere with electrical service is a potential charging point (albeit at slower charge rates than 150kw-350kw).
Wyoming refused the terms for federal funds for fast DC charging stations. You cannot help those who won’t accept help, getting left behind is a choice.
The US is massive. That supercharger map shows vast regions of the US with almost no superchargers and entire long-haul highway systems with none at all. And some of these are highways I travel on. If you actually know the highway system in the US, that supercharger network map is a joke. Maybe in another decade it will be something close to having decent coverage but that map is stark evidence of its deficiency for many people.
Sure, there are a lot of superchargers on many parts of the coast. They have always been available where I live and I have a Tesla charger in my home. But the US is a continent sized country. Pretending the inconvenient parts don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
I am always astonished at how dismissive some people are at the practical concerns of Americans that don’t solely live in an insular coastal metro. It isn’t a good look and needlessly invites resentment.
The problem is you’re arguing today and I’m arguing the next ten years. The Supercharger network has grown wildly since I bought my S in 2018 (and have driven it cross country over the last six years, mostly on Superchargers), and as long as it keeps up with EV uptake, that is good enough. It does not need to be perfect, and someone will always find a complaint. Sell to people who will buy, ignore people who will find excuses not to.
As long as Tesla can sell every vehicle they build and continue to drag legacy automakers to an EV future, individual opinions of the network are of low value. It was of enough value for major automakers to know they couldn’t succeed without it.
In ten years, I might not disagree. Today, there are many parts of the US where many people would be idiots to buy an EV. Many people would be fine with EVs today, but that probably isn’t the case for a large percentage of Americans.
> You cannot help those who won’t accept help, getting left behind is a choice.
It’s a bit like antivaxxer parents: it’s their decision, but it puts all other kids at school at risk, especially those who can’t take vaccines for valid medical reasons.
It’s their decision, but the whole planet bears the consequences.
According to every source on the Internet, circumnavigating Iceland appears to be ~1300 kilometers. It would require impressive detours to make that 2000 kilometers.
Like I said, it is smaller than almost all US States. Iceland isn’t that large.
> I don’t understand what people expect to gain by antagonizing people that cannot drive an EV. It trains them to ignore or oppose
It is because people say weird things like...
> As long as significant parts of the US are not readily navigable by EVs 12 months out of the year, and that looks to remain the case for quite some time
Words like "significant" and "quite some time" are undefined here, but there are really quite few places that aren't navigable now. And even in the remaining ones, there's no reason that it has to stay that way more than a few years.
> As long as significant parts of the US are not readily navigable by EVs 12 months out of the year
While a BEV may not be on the cards for them, a PHEV running on biodiesel can be a perfect way to both cut emissions and fulfil their daily requirements. Even just plain biodiesel can be enormously helpful in farming and remote locations.
So the argument for EVs here is not that they're better, but that the experience of owning a gas car will eventually get worse, bringing the convenience bar down to meet EVs? That's hardly compelling. It also reminds me of some people's efforts to "improve" public transport which seem to consist only of intentionally inconveniencing car drivers, but doing barely anything to actually improve the alternatives
If we assume ICE car owners are freeloading on the rest of us (fossil fuel externalities), and them losing some convenience is making their life harder, that is an accurate reading. No one likes paying true costs when they come due, and they've been riding on a discount. We'll do our best to reach parity with combustion vehicles, but there is no guarantee, and some sacrifice might be required.
I've said in numerous other comments that we should provide generous subsidies to ease any transition burdens, but there might be gaps unfortunately.
How many flights have you taken in your lifetime? How many children do you have? Do you eat meat? Do you use multiple monitors when a 14" one would do? Why don't you cycle instead of using an EV? Do you not use solar panels? You could apply this reductionist logic to almost everything in the world.
"Freeloading on the rest of us", "some sacrifice might be required". What a depressing, dictatorial view.
Sacrificing people doesn't seem especially kind. Be kind, eh. When it suits you, I guess.
Great questions, because people should be accountable. I have spent over $500k on clean mobility and energy solutions (EVs, rooftop solar on all of my properties [primary, secondary, rentals]) as of this comment, and offset all of my family's annual carbon emissions using credits from verified direct air capture providers. We keep flights to an absolute minimum (I have put ~110k miles on Model S in 6 years traveling cross country), and again, offset those emissions. We are vegetarians. I have two children, and I cut a check to someone who was getting permanent birth control to buy their unwanted fertility essentially. They had already made the decision ("want to hear something cool? I'm getting my tubes out!"), my action was more symbolic but still important.
If you have no resources, as I've said elsewhere, we should absolutely provide you the means to make choices that both improve your quality of life and are good for the climate. Tax me more, provide the subsidies. More EVs, more heat pumps, more solar panels. If you are of means and make choices dumping externalities on others, clearly you can understand my position that those folks get wrecked. I have attempted to align my actions with my position on the topic out of integrity. I agree contributions towards a solution as well as sacrifice should be proportional.
Could you explain why asking people to pay their fully loaded costs is being a dictator? Don't their rights end where our shared rights being? Is enforcing rights and their boundaries tyranny? Or is it just fair and just? Not rhetorical questions. I am attempting to do my part, and besides that, voting, and perhaps running for office, that's all I can do.
Intercity trains make more sense than just the East Coast Acela corridor.
Regular Amtrak trains don't count, they are too slow and too unreliable to count on - I'd take a train from LA to San Francisco if high speed rail existed and it it took less than 3 hours, comparable to flying. But not when it takes 11 hours on Amtrak (assuming it's on schedule, and you don't get delayed waiting on a freight train). Even a bus is faster than a train.
On Teslas? That’s fairly uncommon especially on newer models. There’s plenty of 10+ year old Teslas that have done hundreds of thousands of miles on the original battery pack and still going strong.
Reliability has only improved since then, especially with the recent shift (in some models) towards LFP chemistry, which is much less susceptible to degradation over time than nickel-based chemistry.
Besides, the Model 3 and Y are very popular vehicles today, selling in the millions globally. So not only will the resale market be strong in coming years, there will be a good supply of low-cost parts (including battery packs) from salvage vehicles. You won't have to go to Tesla for a replacement battery back even if you needed one.
400mi range seems a bit overkill since I'm up for a break after 4hours of driving, but 300mi seems like the lower end of acceptable, if you don't have another car for trips. I don't want to have to do some special charge for a <3 hour roundtrip, and if you use only 80-20% that gets you 90mi each way while still charging at home.
After taking an EV on a ~6500 mile road trip a couple months ago, I never want to road trip in a gas car ever again. Highlights:
- by the 2.5-3.5 hour mark between charges, I'm ready for a 25-35 min break and its somewhere nice and not a gas station
- stop anywhere and sleep with air conditioning for free
- never have to use gas station bathroom
- never have to calculate any routes or fuel stops
- also no gas cars drive themselves as well as EVs can yet so driving fatigue is so much better
There were times it felt like I was on my own private train where I got to set the route through national parks, scenic routes, etc and not deal with strangers.
> - by the 2.5-3.5 hour mark between charges, I'm ready for a 25-35 min break and its somewhere nice and not a gas station
What does that have to do with the power source? You can take breaks anywhere in an ICE vehicle too.
> - never have to use gas station bathroom
Can't you use the same bathrooms in ICE vehicles? Are they EV only? Does your EV include a half-bath?
> - never have to calculate any routes or fuel stops
I don't do that in ICE vehicles; gas stations are so common that I just find one when I need it. Is your EV's range greater? Also, aren't EV chargers harder to find that gas stations?
> not deal with strangers
To each their own, but back to our primate ancestors we are social beings.
EV chargers tend to be in places you actually want to be, such as shopping centers with decent restaurants and coffee shops. Yes, you absolutely can make two stops in a ICE vehicle - a gas station, then an optional stop to visit a shopping center. But people tend to stay where they stop then get back on the road. It’s not the power source that’s being discussed, it’s where the existing refueling infrastructure exists today. Reality is gas stations exist because gasoline is a noxious toxic pollutant that tends to explosively combust at worst and pollute the soil with benzene at best so you don’t generally mix it with a lot of other use. EV chargers are none of these things, and so can be placed literally anywhere in existing infrastructure like shopping centers and malls.
I agree, I have no issue taking long distance trips in my EV. My cars range is about 5 hours of driving, after which I am more than happy to get out at a charging station with a nice restaurant and eat some food, then drive to my stopping point for the day. I’m not really sure being able to drive 10 hours with a 5 minute stop for gas is a benefit over driving 10 hours with a 25 minute stop for a charge, especially if I do the 5 minute gas refuel then drive to the restaurant with the EV charger to eat for another 25 minutes. That’s 5 minutes of extra time to get gas rather than refueling at the same time.
> Can't you use the same bathrooms in ICE vehicles? Are they EV only? Does your EV include a half-bath?
No idea if it's right, but I think they are saying that places with EV chargers tend to be nicer than gas stations. And maybe ICE drivers can stop at those places, but are they really going to make an extra stop when they already have to get gas?
I'd point out that this is probably a temporary phenomenon, due to the relative rarity of EVs and their status as luxury items. Once everyone has them and they're cheap, I'll bet the EV charging stations' bathrooms will be just as bad.
I don't agree with your speculation for a couple of reasons, primarily:
- 90% of EV charging is done at home, meaning that even when all cars are EV, there will be an order of magnitude less usage of the public infrastructure.
- EV infrastructure does not require employees on site so it is not beholden to the same 'service center' economic model premised upon selling snacks and becoming defacto grocery stores for impoverished locals.
But also, EV charging stations are purposely located in existing commercial areas like malls, hotels, grocery stores, strip malls, etc. whose bathrooms are supported by businesses with a much bigger reputation to uphold than one whose customer loyalty is fundamentally linked to being 3 cents cheaper than the identical building across the street.
> You can take breaks anywhere in an ICE vehicle too.
Yea, ADDITIONAL breaks, you also have to take short breaks at gas stations
>Can't you use the same bathrooms in ICE vehicles? Are they EV only? Does your EV include a half-bath?
I am not a lawyer but I do feel comfortable walking into a Marriott bathroom when I am a paying customer for their charging station, but would feel sketchy walking into hotels randomly.
> I just find one when I need it.
You're proving my point here by saying your just find one when you have to. My car just takes me to the ideal one automatically.
> Yea, ADDITIONAL breaks, you also have to take short breaks at gas stations
My mid-size sedan (Kia K5) gets about 400 miles on a full tank, which is larger than the range of most (all?) EVs, which means that I will be stopping less often for less time than an EV driver.
> You're proving my point here by saying your just find one when you have to. My car just takes me to the ideal one automatically.
Gas stations literally line highways. They're naturally on the way to wherever I am going, I don't need to route to them. Charging stations are not.
From Atlanta to Vegas to SF, up the coast to Washington, then back east though the middle of the country and back to Atlanta, going through Grand canyon, petrified forest, Yosemite, Shasta, redwood forest, Columbia River gorge, Yellowstone, Badlands, and car camping at some state parks on the way. I think it was 27 states total, 99.9% self driving and zero planning on my part.
Oh, and only one hotel night on the way west, and another hotel night heading back east. The only reason we did that was for showers basically. (We stayed with friends in Oregon for a week)
Most charging stations are at restaurants or shopping malls. Yes, they are high power charging stations. I usually get 300 or so miles in my bathroom / beverage breaks. A full charge if I’m eating.
They are all charging and bathroom stops. On the Tesla charging network, you are stopping at: malls, hotels, target, grocery stores, or occasionally restaurants. In the absolute worst case they are at a place like buc-ees or those highway access 'travel hubs' with a food court in the middle of the highway.
I've only had one stop ever where the bathroom was a hassle, it was a 'locked for paying customers', at a mall Starbucks in Arizona.
I’d argue most families have two cars though. So you get one EV and keep the ICE until the charging infrastructure is where it needs to be.
Another alternative is to just rent a car for that long road trip which I’ve done in the past.
That being said, I think far more people worry about daily mileage than you think. People think in terms of time spent driving, not distance. They tend to assume every hour is 60 miles and reality is for most it’s nowhere near that. I’ve had my wife lose her mind that the car is warning about range with 25 miles remaining and she’s 6 miles from home. Humans tend to be REALLY bad about estimating the distance of something but really good about estimating time.
If someone were to ask you how far your office is from the airport, I bet you’d respond with how long it takes to get there, not how many miles it is away.
> If someone were to ask you how far your office is from the airport, I bet you’d respond with how long it takes to get there, not how many miles it is away.
To be fair, in this case, time makes way more sense. I need to know when to leave to get there in time for my flight, and I don't care about the actual distance.
And this is only because modern tech has made distance a moot point - we can travel _any_ distance these days, up to the moon (it's all a matter of just cost).
But EV's have upended that - distance matters with EV.
I live about 9 miles from the airport (Edinburgh), but that is going through the city centre. If I take my city bypass, it's 20 miles. Depending on time of day, the bypass is often quicker.
Fat-thumbed my previous reply. Anyway, we love taking road trips in our HEV. It's a good middle ground until the kinks of EVs get worked out and I'm confident that will happen soon.
This is more problematic in apartment buildings without parking space. I imagine that, as BEV adoption increases, parking lots will offer more charging spots. Ideally, one charges the car where it’s parked, and retrofitting apartment buildings for that might be complicated.
“Never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep” comes to mind here, to borrow from Taleb.
Most people I know take annual or more frequent road trips for travel, sport, or to visit family in neighboring states. These aren’t edge cases, they’re normal and predictable parts of peoples lives.
EV driver here who takes many road trips a year in them, so my hobbiest enthusiasm certainly guides my thinking.
How impractical is renting a car for a once a year trip? EVs have a lot of upsides in terms of never going to a gas station and having less maintenance.
How impractical is it to rent a car for Dec 23 to Jan 1 if lots of other EV owners are doing the same thing?
We're a happy one ICE, one EV family, but there's no way in hell we could be all EV. Our Christmas road trip is 766 miles each way, and our gas car does it in about 11 hours of wall-clock time door-to-door, including the two fuel stops owing to that car having such a small gas tank.
I just saw the ABRP link below, so I played around with it abit. In our 2015 Nissan LEAF, that becomes a 29 hour trip with 22 charging stops. Obviously, that's a dumb car to take on a road trip.
In a Hyundai AWD Long Range, it's 14h02m with 5 charging stops. A Tesla M3LR shaves 28 minutes off that time, but still takes 23% longer than the sub-$5K 2005 Honda CR-V.
This is the way. Currently have one ICE. Would probably buy an EV for a second. Too many things are too hard or too unsafe in an EV and renting can be a nightmare sometimes.
I also think people forget what happened to rentals during COVID.
I'm not GP, but the towing capacities of most EVs are pretty abysmal (in both weight and range), which is a factor in our selection.
Finding one that can tow even 3000 lbs is uncommon and 6000 lbs or more puts you into the Rivian/Lightning/Hummer realm in EVs ($$$). Or any-old <$20K used half-ton or mid-size SUV can tow that all day long.
You can be stranded in the middle of nowhere because a road is closed for many hours or days due to inclement weather or an accident and the detour is 100-200km beyond anticipated, with no charging possibility in between. Some parts of the mountain west have 200km between exits. Has happened to me multiple times. In some places and some times of the year, getting stranded legitimately risks exposure to the elements.
You can find a road impassable because EVs almost universally have poor ground clearance. If a road is closed due to conditions, per the above, the alternatives that are remotely reasonable in terms of distance may require high ground clearance to safely traverse. Again, I have been able to circumvent road closures for various reasons because I had a high-clearance vehicle. There are parts of the US where I will not drive without one.
Many years ago, I would routinely rescue people out of the Sierra Nevada in winter that had foolishly taken their (ICE) SUV on unplowed roads they were not equipped to traverse. You can die from exposure to the elements in that country, both winter and summer. An EV is much, much more poorly equipped for these types of environments. They were lucky I trawled for people on those roads (it was a hobby), they may not have been found for days.
tl;dr: high ground clearance and robust reliable range are serious safety features in the mountain west. Lack of it may find you stranded for days in difficult survival environments. Same reason I also carry ample water when driving through the same areas, just in case.
This has very little to do with EVs in principle and a lot to do with everything else about a vehicle except its powertrain.
EVs have low ground clearance for efficiency, just like most sedans. That's been "almost universal" so far because extra range costs $$$ for an EV but almost nothing worth of space for an ICE, so every little bit of lowered resistance helps. But sedans "almost universally" have poor ground clearance too. In contrast, a Rivian's ground clearance is up to 14.9".
As you note an ill-equipped ICE SUV on unplowed roads is just as much as disaster.
"An EV" is not inherently more poorly equipped for unplowed roads and going off-road. Most EVs on the market today are, just as most sedans on the market today are too. You make serious compromises on efficiency to support going off-road, and for an EV that adds a lot of cost. (And frankly for an ICE that also adds a lot of cost, especially if most of the time that vehicle drives on a clear highway, in terms of operational expenses and externalities.)
As that cost continues to drop for EVs, though, we'll see more vehicles that are actually equipped for the mountain west at prices that are less stratospheric.
> You can find a road impassable because EVs almost universally have poor ground clearance.
Define: "poor ground clearance"
Tesla Model 3: 5.2"
Tesla Model S: 5-7" (in has a manually adjustable pneumatic suspension)
Ford F150: 8-9.5"
You can get bigger wheels for bigger clearances and you can also obviously put snow chains on Teslas as well.
As of September 2023, 11.05% of new vehicle registrations in Colorado were electric. It has a lot of both mountains and snow. It depends on the specific model and how cold, but a Tesla generally speaking can keep the heat on for ~72 hours or so if it is not moving in the cold. I lived in Chicago and survived three polar vortexes (the worst was -22F in front of my house) and my Tesla did just fine.
You are confused if you conflate chains with ground clearance. They are not fungible. If your sole frame of reference is “snow” and cold weather then you don’t understand the problem. 5 inches of ground clearance is a joke in many areas. There is a reason people religiously buy Subarus with almost 9 inches of ground clearance. It isn’t negotiable if you actually understand the problem.
My minimum requirement for ground clearance for many years, and based on real-world experience, is 8 inches. I’ve owned vehicles with less and more, and used all in less than ideal circumstances re: ground clearance. The last time I had a vehicle with ground clearance as low as a Tesla, it wasn’t great for the vehicle, and I have a lot of experience navigating those conditions to minimize damage.
Just because it never has applied to you, clearly, doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem.
In my experience (M3LR) you spend about 15-20 minutes charging every 2-3 hours. ABRP tells you how much time you spend charging, and otherwise assumes map drive time, which may not correspond to your “11 hours” depending on how aggressively you drive.
How much longer it takes also depends on how long you’d stop anyway — rarely go more than 2-3 hours without stopping anyway, even when we road tripped in our ICE.
A similar length trip (Sacramento to Seattle) takes 1h15m of charging for a 11h45m trip — about 10%. (23% seems high, but you may be making different assumptions, perhaps leaving with a low charge and having to arrive with a high charge.)
I took whatever the ABRP defaults were. I noticed it started at 90% SoC, but I didn't look at any of the other settings [nor change any]. I still have the M3LR tab open. It says 11h42m drive and 1h32m charge. From my experience in the LEAF, 85 mph highway cruising gives a substantial range penalty, which I'm assuming is baked into a sensible charging route planner.
Our ~11 hour actuals from this past trip were moving with a purpose, but not Cannonballing as a family of four in a 20 year old CR-V, averaging right around 70 mph door-to-door.
Right, but isn’t 92 min / 702 min (11h42m) is a 13% increase, not 23%? (Also, ABRP by default adds 5 minutes “overhead” to charging stops — reasonable for non-superchargers were you have to futz with everything, but the supercharger overhead is frankly less than a gas station. Pull up, plug in, done.)
I found the range penalty for going above 75 mph to be a weird thing…I typically target supercharger arrivals at 15%. If there’s…extra drag, let’s say…I might arrive around 10% or lower. But the battery charges really fast at that SoC, at least on the 250kW superchargers. If the extra drag gets me there 10-15 minutes sooner for a 2-hour segment, I’ll only see a charge penalty of 2-3 minutes.
Of course, I’m only thinking about all this stuff because I love spreadsheets more than is reasonable; most people won’t, shouldn’t, and don’t have to bother!
The one I typed above for the M3LR the first time was 13h34m vs 11h00m CR-V observed (2-way average). That’s the 23% increase, which I assume ABRP is choosing a time-optimizing cruise speed from the settings panel, so I took its time estimate. (I’m not a Tesla owner, so I’m taking route optimization choices at face value. My LEAF’s range suffers badly at even 70mph.)
Ah, I see. Then I think you may be comparing apples and oranges -- in my experience ABRP is not doing the right thing with charge curves and cruise speed, which is dependent on a large number of unknowable factors at the planning stage anyway (e.g., temperature, wind). The default settings also assume you are traveling at the speed limit, which it sounds like you are not.
Roughly, you get about 20% lower range by traveling at 80mph (80mi, 25 kWh, 3.2mi/kWh) vs 60mph (60 mi, 15 kWh, 4mi/kWh), and then lose another 20% going from 80mph to 90mph (90 mi, 35 kWh, 2.6mi/kWh). [0]
Peak charging speed is 250kW and is sustained from ~5%-~35%, and then tapers. Charging from 10%-60% is typical, and takes about 13 minutes for about 38 kWh, meaning that each kWh you use adds about 20 seconds of charging. [1]
We can integrate these into the speeds and consumptions above to construct effective speeds that account for the charging time required. E.g., at 60 mph you travel 60 miles in an hour, consume 15 kWh of energy, and thus spend 5 minutes charging -- 60 miles over 65 minutes is about 55 mph.
nominal -> effective speed (efficiency):
60 mph -> 55 mph (92%)
70 mph -> 62 mph (90%)
80 mph -> 70 mph (88%)
90 mph -> 75 mph (83%)
100 mph -> 80 mph (80%) - whee!
So even though you spend more of your travel time charging at higher speeds, your effective travel speed continues to go up well into speeds you're probably not cruising at.
In other words, that peak "optimized cruise speed" for a modern EV that can charge 38 kWh in 13 minutes (~175 kW) is well above what you're probably driving anyway.
For comparison, if you stop for 5 minutes every 3 hours in your ICE to refuel, at 80 mph you've got an effective speed of 77 mph, about 10% faster than your EV at 80 mph. (The above scenario has you stopping every 1.5h at 80mph in the 75 kWh-capacity EV; of course, you could stop less frequently but with a bit of a hit to your effective speed assuming 0 stop overhead.)
Not making any normative claims here about what's better, etc. -- just laying out the numbers as I see them!
Thanks! That’s helpful data and rules of thumb. We were moving comfortably with left lane traffic in the Northeast. Speeds varied by state but were still well within the ranges you calculated above.
ABRP's default assumes really close to the (often incorrectly mapped) speed limits. Having said that, your figures are probably pretty close. You'd just need to adjust the drive time for 80+ instead of ~70, and increase the charge times by maybe 10-15 minutes.
70mph is the upper end of the sweet spot for Tesla distance driving. I lived in Chicago for a decade and had a Model 3 for the majority of that (purchased it in 2018 new). From our house in Chicago to our family's house in Kentucky, it was 385 miles door to door. We'd stop in Indianapolis (or Lafayette, IN) and grab a bite to eat, stretch our legs, and use the restroom. It would always be done charging before we were finished eating, so no big deal at all. We've since purchased a Tesla Model Y and have done many road trips. I'm hoping to get the Cybertruck in the next year or so with the range extender. I do have a farm and plan on using it to haul stuff, but with 470 miles of range, we can drive generally longer than I'd ever want to with two kids and go camping.
If you have a collector car or an unreliable car, I can see how that could make financial sense. If you have anything that people would describe as a "normal, reliable car", that does not seem like a money-saving move. 1600 miles of mostly highway usage is not particular stressful on a car.
Depending on your car, it could easily be 30 cents / mile in depreciation + maintenance costs. So that's "worth" $480. Depending on how long of a trip and the type of car, the rental may well be cheaper.
Theoretically, renting a car for rare long drives is a reasonable proposal. In practice, it's a PITA in most areas. You go to pick it up, the rental office is understaffed, so you wait 20-30 minutes or more. Then they spend time trying to upsell you on the car and insurance and fuel plans, and then tell you they don't have the actual car model you reserved but they have a [not really comparable] substitute. Then you have to spend time walking around the car, looking for dents and scratches so they don't get charged to you when you turn it in.
It would be more practical if it worked like on the TV ads where you just walk up to your car, get in, and go.
Throw in the risk of Hertz randomly charging your credit card $30,000 because they thought you stole the car.
Or they fancied some extra revenue and ding you for a bogus $500 scratch
Or they downgrade you but lie and say it’s actually an upgrade
Enterprise give me actual proper attitude when I decline their extra insurance. Their snotty 20 year old new recruits are all like “would you mind explaining why you’re declining?” in an aggressive tone
Enterprise also basically threaten you in to taking it. They mention they charge £1000 per piece of damage, reiterating this multiple times. They remind me of the mafia. I reminded the manager of my local branch that such intimidation is illegal
I rent cars approximately all the time (I live on an island, so when I go anywhere, it's by air, and except for NYC, I always get a car wherever I go). Maybe 20 rentals/yr, a few years it was 50+ rentals.
Any of the big company "frequent renter" programs, like National Emerald Aisle/Executive, Hertz #1, etc., gives all the stuff you want. Usually I'm at airport locations (which do have extra taxes/fees), but it's "walk up to car, walk around one time just to make sure there's nothing obviously wrong, get in, adjust mirrors, configure usbc/carplay, stop at booth where they take my drivers license and credit card, drive off". With National I get my pick of any car on the lot (and with a corp discount code, usually around $30-40/day all-in).
The local branches suck a little more due to limited selection and lack of cannelized check out, but they're pretty close. Also way worse at most non-US locations (with the exception of big gateway airports).
I've returned cars and aside from one time where I drove over a concrete curb at CDG which I couldn't see (sigh, at the airport itself, returning the car), and had to pay for damages, it's always been painless. One time I returned a car where thieves at Stanford had broken the rear glass, and at SFO they just said "oh, another one", and checked a box on the return form; everything was handled via email after that.
There are also day-rate car rentals through Uber and some other programs like that where you use an app, find car, and drive off.
I would have no problem relying on rental for the last 5% of car needs (e.g. if I had a 2 seater or something, or didn't want to get snow tires to go into the mountains, etc. The "get to the rental location" is the biggest friction, and in true emergency cases where I absolutely need a car right then, which is why I usually rent for the whole trip.
> With National I get my pick of any car on the lot (and with a corp discount code, usually around $30-40/day all-in).
When I fly and need a car I also use National to avoid the hassle of long lines and forms, just walk to the lot, pick a car get in and go, zero hassle. But this only works at airport locations so it is not a solution for the local use being discussed.
With local rentals I've never managed to get out in less than ~45 minutes of paperwork and waiting, it's a huge hassle.
Also as you'll know, with the Emerald Aisle the minimum class is midsize so there's a price premium for the convenience. Just got back from a trip yesterday using a National rental, $644 all-in for 6 days for the smallest car I can get on Emerald Aisle. Over $100/day. You must have a nice corp discount.
I live ~10m away from my territory's biggest airport so I guess I'm spoiled on local rentals that way. But I was mainly thinking about the long-distance road trip use case for a vehicle, in which case an hour+ trip to the airport to pick up the vehicle isn't necessarily unreasonable, either -- I've rented for weeks at a time, and if you're putting 300+ miles/day on a car, makes sense even if you own a comparable vehicle. If the 1-4 road trips/yr which exceed your EV's capabilities require an hour to set up for a road trip, might still be worth it, especially if the EV saves you time with HOV lane access every day.
(My favorite rental car option of all time was Silvercar -- they had a fleet of identical Audi A4 sedans, no-hassle app based rental, good for the time prices ($50-60/day), and zero hassle overall. Something happened and they became audiondemand and became vastly more expensive, though.)
This sounds like a very outdated view. I rent cars semi-frequently and the pick-up and drop-off are usually very fast if not nearly instant. This assumes you made the reservation online. I've had some annoyingly long waits in recent years but those have been exceptions and weren't really all that long, more just annoying.
I have the top tier of Avis loyalty program, almost exclusively on corporate rates, and even then arriving at SFO often results in a > 30 minute delay between arriving at the rental car centre and getting on the 101.
If you try to rent at an in-town location, forget about it, you're going to be dealing with someone who has spent a long time watching The Apprentice and thinks they know what business is about trying to sell you a 2008-era navigation system.
Just not my experience I guess. No upsells, never a 30 minutes wait. I haven't owned a car in 15 years so renting is pretty normal for me and almost always effortless.
I've rented cars on and off for ~15 years, my experience: there are certainly regional differences but renting has certainly got shittier and shitter over the years, perhaps skewed by my experience in Europe:
- Car class inflation (cheaper models, models being bumped up a category i.e. "Luxury" not actually being Luxury)
- Instead of raising prices sufficiently, they use 'damage' as a revenue stream more and more
- Reticence to give you a printed paper contracts, making it harder to inspect them.
- Far less thorough damage recording. It's like they just delete existing damage in the records at the beginning of the rental. I always get a blank damage sheet when I rent.
- Higher and higher mileage vehicles
- Bigger and bigger deposits and damage excess ("co-pay")
- Dynamic Currency Conversion scam
- Fuel recharge scam
This isn't just a post-pandemic cost-recovery thing. Renting was getting shittier in the years prior
Once a year? not terrible. More, potentially bad. Car rentals are crazy expensive.
I took a week vacation with friends last year and it cost me more to rent a car to get to the location than the combined cost of every thing else. The car was only used to get there and get back, but it's not like I could only rent it for the start and end days.
Just having to rent a car a few times a year would kill most/any potential savings from an EV.
But is it still expensive compared to the situation where you're buying fuel for the ICE instead? For many places, the saving on the fuel costs will more than offset the occasional trip.
It's kind of similar to why we got rid of the second car. Sure, it's useful, but for all the extra costs, I can take multiple taxi trips a year. (I barely do 1 in practice)
I mean it really depends. There are probably some circumstances where it's cheaper. But I think it's not a forgone conclusion. Renting costs money, and you'll need gas for it too. Motortrends estimates 1300 to 2000 a year in fuel for an Accord. And 400-1200 for electricity in a tesla model 3 (charging at home not a supercharger). I can easily imagine eating up the savings in one or two rental trips, and that's certainly less convenient.
Depends on many factors. I’ve lived where I could grab an SUV from the rental shop down the street anytime I wanted, and I’ve lived where the drive to the rental shop would almost exhaust some EVs.
So own an EV and rent the SUV, camper, hybrid, whatever once or twice a year. Normal and predictable events can get good discounts with advance reservation. Obviously if the trips are more frequent, eg. monthly, the economics will shift toward an ICE vehicle.
But >90% of folks can probably just rent once or twice a year.
Furthermore this argument would favor plug-in hybrids, not fully electric cars.
If only 30 miles is required most of the times, why go with these big, heavy, expensive batteries when you need only a quarter of it. Something like the Chevrolet Volt would be perfect, fully covering the 93% case with its smaller battery, but for the remaining 7%, the gas engine gives it a better range than any fully electric car.
And for emissions, we are 93% there with a plug-in hybrid, so clearly that's the solution.
Except, maybe not... because there is another trick in that stat. Maybe 93% of the trips are less than 30 miles, but 93% of the miles driven are necessarily part of a trip that is more than 30 miles. Same thing for that "40 miles a day", it doesn't account for days where no driving happens. So it means that it you take a random car on the road, there is a good chance it is doing a longer trip than 30-40 miles.
Forget range, you can’t even reliably charge non-Tesla EVs without having to drive 20 min to find a working charging station. This is a problem I’ve had in a densely populated NY suburb when I was given an electric Genesis as a loaner car.
The car was incredible to drive, and I was sold on the idea that my next vehicle would be an EV until I had 3 miles of charge left after leaving my fourth broken charging station.
It's amazing how many people commenting here effectively refuse to acknowledge that there are ways (and more than one!) in which ICE cars are better than EVs and want to believe that no one could rationally decide on different trade-offs.
I own and EV, and I love it. But pretending the paradigm shift comes with no undesirable trade-offs is absurd. And wanting everyone to come to a uniform decision about what they value is a great example of technocratic tyranny.
I live in a condo. We have four charging ports and about a dozen EV owners.
Unless I'm hyper-focused on something, I'm lazy. On the off chance I get lucky and get a charging port, I'm not going to remember to go out in two hours or whatever to move it for someone else to use. I'd probably be getting angry emails for sitting in the charging port for days at a time.
Moreover, I frequently catch myself near empty on the tank. I like that I can find a gas station anywhere and fix the situation almost immediately. I had to sit and wait on a friend's charging once, and it's not something I look forward to.
The whole usage pattern around EVs frankly scares me.
It's so much easier to try to shame and gaslight people into believing their problems are fake than it is to fix those problems. The "range anxiety" idea is going to be particularly important as EV tech matures and midmarket vehicles have to start being made, because those vehicles are going to absolutely suck. Right now almost all of the ones we talk about are luxury cars, of course they they fantastic performance and features, but the 20k new car of the future is going to look like the electric Mini Cooper. Estimated range of a bit over 100 miles with a 7 second 0-60. Basically an ICE car but with dramatically worse range.
The whole EV experience seems tailored to suburbia where people can keep their car near their home and drive frequently on short trips. Many of them have the EV as a second car to circumvent the road trip issue.
I live in a mildly dense city and a lot of my neighborhood uses street parking. I almost never drive for short trips and a major reason I got a car at all is for longer more infrequent trips. I'd be happy to take a train instead but it is twice the price of flying and takes twice as long as driving. Instead of trains we'll get EVs and their infrastructure subsidized, no matter how much it ends up costing.
It's not just direct subsidy. Some local ordinances now require buildings to provide chargers so people who don't drive will pay more in housing costs.
This is spot on. I do a ton of cross country driving and seeing people sitting in their car charging for an hour outside a diner in a gas-station-town off a highway is super common and makes the point. I talk to them. They rationalize it. But you can tell it sucks.
We all want a cleaner planet and we need to be able to talk about how to solve the charge time problem without the hysterics and the bullshit.
There is no need to charge for an hour today unless the car is first gen EV or the charger is not a fast charger. The fast charger roll out could be better, but it's expanding quote rapidly, only in the most rural places is it a major issue... That said I have seen cases where people add 30 mins of a diversion to a route to use a fast charger for 30 mins.
I've had an EV since 2019 and did a few longer trips, including outside teh normal charging networks and I only had to wait fun line twice. It IS annoying when it happens, especially when I was in the middle of nowhere and the charger was being used by a pluggable hybrid
I've never waited. 95% of my charging is at home. The other 5% is Tesla superchargers and have never waited. At most 90% of slots taken, so close, but never had to wait so far.
Yep. I have a Diesel. My average trip length will be roughly 60km. However, 4 - 8 times a year I need to go much further. Last year a single round trip for work was roughly 2200 km. And that was through extreme rural environments. The vast majority of places I stopped to refill the vehicle did not have electric service.
Average trips being serviceable doesnt help me. I dont buy a vehicle assuming it will work on average, I buy a vehicle knowing in will serve every one of my use cases.
Yeah so I went Brisbane - Goondiwindi - Lake Cowal and return on my last trip.
Using ABRP and a random electric it adds a lot of time to the trip, diverting me via Warwick/Tenterfield avoiding the Toowoomba - Gwindi part of the trip. there's also 9 hours 21 minutes of charging.
Thats before determining whether the vehicle is suitably rugged, long stretches of road were uncovered. One of these trips we found ourselves on an unmaintained service road with deep potholes and several down trees.
My next trip is likely to be Brisbane to Mt Isa, and its got a large stretch of red on ABRP.
There is a general drought of Tesla SCs in Queensland / NE Australia, so ABRP can't find a suitable route only using the SC network. Otherwise a scenario for the Lucid Air Dream Edition has it charging 6 times for a total of 4h12m (in "great" conditions, though; I can't change the car's consumption mi/wh on the desktop site): https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=c34a381b-83fc-4bd... - but of course this is one of the most expensive and longest range EVs available today.
The vehicle is mine, I make sure its maintained properly, has correct tires, I make sure its got what I need. I have access to it even when the local rental company has only Nissan hatches. The diesel costs me maybe 15% more than the petrol for my old honda hatch. Its also more comfortable, safer (for me) and a more enjoyable ride.
> The vast majority of places I stopped to refill the vehicle did not have electric service.
They didn’t have electricity?! What country are you in?! How did they power their pumps?!
Ok, I’m being too hyperbolic.
I assume you mean they didn’t have DC fast charging, perhaps making a trip less practical, but I’d find it hard to believe there was no electric service whatsoever. One of the great benefits for EVs is that you can plug in anywhere.
> I buy a vehicle knowing in will serve every one of my use cases.
Vehicles are for already specific use cases; I don’t try to drive my car into the lake. I think a vehicle that can do everything probably can’t do many things well.
A lot of the world is not so developed. Ewan MacGreggor did a show on AppleTV about trying to drive from Argentina to California on electric bikes with Rivian support.
For most of Argentina and Chile and Bolivia there was no electricity at all, except for the occasional domestic windmill. We’re taking about 5,100 km of wild land. They had to charge the Rivians by attaching tow-cables to semi-trucks and being pulled, back and forth, to use the regenerative system. So deisel power, indirectly.
FWIW that is complete hyperbole.
I drove Alaska to Argentina more than a decade before they did [1]. I tried as hard as I could to get as remote as possible and as far from civilization as possible. Only once did I need to carry a jerry can to get than the 600km my little Jeep got from its stock gas tank. Note any place with a gas pump has power (and cellular internet).
I also drove right around Africa through 35 countries getting as remote as possible. Again, I had to work hard to need more than 600km of range.
I also drove 18 months around Australia, including the world's most remote road, also across the Simpson. Again, aside from a few really odd cases (where no normal ice vehicle can get anyway) I was never far from power.
All of those places are developing rapidly, and all have been driven by EVs more than once.
I mean I could have pulled up, gotten out an extension cord and begged for electricity, but clearly I meant advertised bays for electric vehicle charging.
> 93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips that are beyond the range of an electric car
I live in a dense city and don’t own a car. For most of my regular trips, a bicycle is faster and more convenient than a car.
Any time we do rent a car, it’s for trips longer than 100mi. Weekend trips and such. An EV absolutely does not fit our usecase. We tried renting a Tesla once and it was … not great.
Yes we’re probably and edge case. But there’s lots of people living in dense cities. That’s why they’re dense.
My next car will be an EV. I have no concern about the advertised range. The real worry is what the range will look like in 5-10 years when it is cold out.
As someone who is 6 years in: It's not that bad. Really the only issue is when it's REALLY cold, like single digits F (negative double digits C) where the car is charging, and the battery is cold, it basically will not charge at home (Supercharger can do it, but takes a very long time). If the charging starts before the battery freezes, it's good.
Sorry to the repliers here, I hadn't checked replies in a couple days...
The car in question is a Dec 2016 Tesla Model S, location is Northern Colorado, USA. I don't have space in my garage, so the car is outside. My normal trips are 5 miles around town.
How is this not a deal breaker? It's happened for maybe 10-15 days of the 7 years I've had it. It's not going to be an issue if you park in a garage. Much further south and it's not going to be a problem. Much further north and you're going to want to have a garage, or...
Charge after you drive, so the battery isn't dead cold. Much of my lack of ability to charge has been due to scheduling the charging to start at midnight, so if I drive the car and plug it in, it will sit there for 4-8 hours before it starts trying to charge. When you drive it, the battery warms up enough that you can charge.
This means that if you plug it in and it won't charge, unless the battery is nearly dead, you can go drive it for 10-30 minutes and plug it in. Also, if you drive more than I do in a day (10-20 miles a day), if you plug it in after driving and start charging immediately, you'll probably be fine.
The more time of the year and the further down you tend to go, I'd expect more issues with charging if your car is outside.
But, this is from my perspective. If you live in a dramatically different climate, see if you can find someone in your area with your usage patterns to get their opinion.
What vehicle and charging are you referring to? I don't routinely need to charge in very low temps, but I have had the experience of charging at 0F just fine with M3P with home L2 charger.
I read the trick is to charge at the end of a day when the battery is warm rather than first thing in the morning when its cold. Its a mind shift, but totally workable.
Depending on the weather my 2018 Model 3 will get 285-300 miles per charge. It was around 300-3015 when I got it. I've had zero issues. Range has never been a problem with the superchargers.
Apparently people are noticing very steep drop-offs in observed range based on temperature, eg. a Mazda CX-90 (26 mile rated range, and gets it pretty consistently at 70F) can only go around 12 miles at 40F.
A big component of it is heater use. In an ICE vehicle, you heat the car with waste heat that is going to be lost anyway. In an EV, you heat the car with energy from the battery. Heating takes up way more energy than most people realize.
It's been a pretty cool area to see innovation in. Newer Teslas (Model Y at least) have a really complex heat pump system that really helps reduce range loss dude to cold weather.
The range on my EV6 is noticeably less in the cold. It feels like I get 0.5-1.0 fewer miles per kWh when temperatures are around freezing (roughly 15-30% less).
On our last couple of trips in freezing temps, we had to hop on backroads so that we could safely reduce our speed enough to make it.
I cannot fathom a non-linear or even random decrease in range due to external factors while driving a vehicle. This is making me rethink getting an EV for my next car. I can only hope/assume this will get solved for in like 10 years.
FWIW, with that downside (and really that plus the range are the biggest two downsides), these are by far outweighed by the upsides.
It is practically zero maintenance, so much more fun/pleasant to drive, and no more trips to the gas station every week or two.
I have considered replacing our other (ICE) vehicle with a second EV, but the article hits on the main reason stopping me: we still take enough road trips that the (current) lack of infrastructure would make those tough for an EV.
But I think I will always own at least one EV, and I’m hoping the infrastructure improves enough to allow me to get rid of our ICE vehicle.
Lithium batteries do have less usable capacity in extremely cold weather, but the real killer is heating. ICE cars have abundant waste heat to warm the cabin, but an EV has to use battery power. For a short journey on a very cold day, it's possible to use more energy for heating than propulsion. EVs are increasingly equipped with heat pumps, but you're still unavoidably going to see a reduction in range as soon as you turn on the climate control.
I've got an 11 year old Model S. The range is reduced somewhat, but overall it's fine. Fine when it's cold out, too, you just set it to preheat before you go. Plug it in overnight.
We looked at getting a hybrid this past fall when buying a car, but couldn't find one that suited our needs. We didn't even look at an EV, because of the range issue (our relatives all live 2+ hours away, visits to them are frequent, and we can't charge it where they live).
Electric drier plugs aren’t always conveniently located (and some won’t have any—apartments and certain types of assisted-living sorts of situations might not).
Normal outlets take forever to charge. Days from, say, 20% charge to get to full. Better not be using it for any other driving while you visit.
May have to kick one of their cars out of a garage, in either case, to reach any outlet. Some people really hate having their car outside.
Dunno how long your trips are, but if you're staying 2-3 days an L1 charger should do the job even if you drive around town a bit while you're there. I also keep an extension cord in my car, which works well for running under garage doors.
Generally, we're driving out, hanging out for a couple hours to have a meal, and driving back. There's no garage to plug the car in; the car area is about 100 feet from the house. Overall, it's just not realistic to plug a car in while visiting them.
If you came to visit me, you couldn't charge your car where I live. I don't have private parking, and the places you can park near me do not have any access to a plug socket. Not everyone is lucky enough to have appropriate infrastructure around them.
The hybrids are still saddled with all the reasons to ditch ICE and go EV: pistons, spark plugs, crankshaft, fuel pump, oil pan & pump, radiator, water pump, distributor, valves, timing belt, fuel injection, transmission, god it's a miracle that stuff ever worked :o)
It was called the Chevy Volt. GM discontinued making them because the Bolt is sooooo much cheaper to produce.
Everybody knows that hybrids are a stopgap and will go obsolete. Consequently, there is negative motivation to produce hybrids.
The problem is that nobody knows when hybrids will go obsolete. If you recommend manufacturing them and they go obsolete during your corporate political tenure, you're screwed.
Govenments need to start subsidizing charging stations just like they subsidized filling stations along interstates and turnpikes. That way we can just make the jump to pure electrics.
Govenments need to start subsidizing charging stations just like they subsidized filling stations along interstates and turnpikes.
100% no, this is one of the problems I have with the recent climate legislation in the USA. This is the equivalent of taking more money out of the pockets of the middle class and giving it to the top 10%, same as the subsidies on electric vehicles which cost > $75K. It does close to nothing to actually encourage people to buy electric vehicles. The charger situation will solve itself once enough people have electric cars, because there will be demand for the service. Right now at least in the US, the model is just throwing money at gas stations and other commercial interests to go against their economic interests. Either the chargers have sufficient demand or it is a giant waste of money.
So, if you want to encourage people to actually buy electric vehicles a better plan is to make it so inexpensive to charge them with actual carbon free energy that they cost less to own and operate.
AKA spend the money on making the power grid provide cheaper power, and the charger problem will solve itself as people compare the price of a new electric vehicle vs a gas one.
I still believe in the dream from the 1960's that started with the catch phrase "electric too cheap to meter". And given the state of the US economy (and may other energy driven markets) it would actually have even farther reaching positive economic impacts beyond convincing people to buy electric cars. Ex: many fundamental industries run away from expensive energy. Its also why the global economy tanks when oil prices spike, or countries go into recession when their energy rates go above their neighbors.
This is the one good idea the Cybertruck has, in my opinion - the expandable battery[1]. If EV powertrains were standardized to the point where you could rent a battery pack to extend your range for these kinds of longer trips I think there would be a lot less anxiety about EV range.
Most people don't ride off the road, yet they get themselves rugged downhill bicycles with crazy big wheels in the city. Other people buy SUVs, in the city, where a smaller vehicle might have a ton of advantages.
This is all in a certain sense irrational behaviour, but in another sense it is more about the feeling. People like to buy things that they can imagine them helping in all life situations.
A car is not a small investment for many and if you have the choice between one that perfectly serves 95% of your trips and might suck at the rest and another that serves 100%, but the 95% are slightly worse/inefficient/expensive, that is a choice one can make. In certain circumstances it could even be the rational choice. E.g. if the charging infrastructure where you live isn't there.
I once worked on a magazine for self-builders (building your own home). The readership was assumed to be entirely aspirational - that is, it wasn't written for self-builders at all, it was written for people who dreamed of being self-builders. A hell of a lot of youtube content fits in the same bucket, IMO.
There's also conspicuous consumption/costly signalling to consider, when it comes to things that are on display like bikes, clothes, cars: in some respects, a car is a piece of jewellery.
I live in a big city and don’t own a car because I can use public transport for the 93% and taxis for most of the rest.
The weekend trip is indeed the problem and I rent an ICE car for that. It’s a pain, car rental companies are crap. If I can order a taxi to my house in 10 mins with an app, why do I have to trek across town and queue for 20 mins with a bunch of seemingly random paperwork to do that. Adds an hour to my trip both ways just doing car hire admin. And then there’s the ‘damage’ they invent when you return it.
From what I hear from folks, it's actually a pretty nice service. I think it's mostly a way to rent really fancy/niche cars? I know friends who will get a Porsche or a Ferrari or something for a day when they're in a city with pretty places to go driving, or something more off-road when that's relevant.
The sort of cars people are likely to have as a second car that they don't mind not having around for a couple days now and then.
Completely agree with your point. I just find it ironic that I mainly hear this argument from people who just bought an EV and are trying to justify it. They'll say "and oh there's the range problem, but 93% of my trips are less than 30 miles anyways".
If you have 93% of your trips under 30mi, and have 1 trip per day, you have 25 over 30mi per year — or about 2 per months.
40mi per day indicates that’s probably 2 trips per day, hence 4 over 30mi per month.
Worrying your car can’t go to the mountains and back to ski on the weekend (or whatever) seems valid — and why those 73% of people are concerned.
Telling me I shouldn’t worry about having a weekend getaway because it’ll do me fine going to and from work is a loser sales pitch. As many here have pointed out.
I almost bought an EV, but road trips became a blocker. I have family about 4 hours drive away. Outside of my town and my destination, there are 3 chargers that can charge an EV in a reasonable amount of time (less than 2 hours).
They're all Electrify America, which are pretty unreliable. I'd have to stop at each and every one of them to ensure I could actually make the four hour drive. Unbelievably annoying.
That's surprising, even when I've used EA chargers that were derated to ~50kW it's never taken me more than 30 minutes to charge. Usually more like 15 minutes. Fwiw I've found that the app is pretty reliable at saying when individual chargers at a station are down (although the status can be a bit misleading when there's cars waiting to charge)
I'm surprised there are 3 Electrify America chargers but no Tesla Superchargers. Then again, a 300-400 mile Tesla can do the trip in one go (charge at your family's place).
Ah, I see. Yeah, the non-tesla networks suck. Tesla is opening up now to other providers, so it shouldn't be an issue in the future, regardless of EV brand you want.
One solution I adopt when I want to do a family trip with more luggage or people than our daily commuter can manage is to rent a bigger car.
A week back I needed to help a cousin move while my wife needed our car. The solution was simple - I rented a slightly bigger one that managed the move with ease. The total cost is still much lower than if we had two cars.
This. I'm not sure why plugin hybrids are not a thing.... actually, I don't even want a plugin "hybrid" I want an EV that never uses the ICE unless you run out of power, then it's just an ICE vehicle entirely... In other words I want something they will never build.
Plugin hybrids are a thing. They're designed as a system though, so a vehicle that works as you describe would need to have more power in both systems in order to run from either one independently. And that means more weight and worse efficiency.
EV and ICE have great synergy if you use them together. EV offers amazing acceleration from zero, and relatively less amazing acceleration at highway speed. ICE has better acceleration when you're already moving. ICE efficiency is poor at low speeds, and better at high speeds, and EV is opposite. ICE can warm up the interior of the vehicle at no extra charge. If the engine is idling to warm up (itself or the occupants), might as well charge the batteries. If the battery has enough charge, it can easily start the engine when needed, so you don't need to idle unless warming is needed... And EV is always ready so you don't have the delay to go that some auto start/stop systems have.
Anyway, at least in my PHEV, it had a 'EV only' mode you can use if you charge it, that operates close to what you suggest. It does run the engine a bit here and there for 'normal operations' and will try to cycle through the gas tank over several months to make sure the gas doesn't go stale. But if it's in EV only mode, acceleration from say 40 mph to 65 mph is poor, and the battery drains quick at 65 mph vs 30 mph ish or stop and go. Significant uphill eats the battery too.
The one I drive is also very much a compromise vehicle, the extra battery for PHEV doesn't have a good place to go, so the trunk space is poor. There's probably ways to design a car to be PHEV first and find better places for the battery, but most/all? PHEVs I've seen are designed hybrid or ICE only first and then stuff extra batteries in storage areas.
Well, the discontinued Chevy Volt is just that: 50ish miles on electrons from the plug-in battery; only then a few hundred on a tank of gas via the ICE. So, no range anxiety, and you can likely commute on battery alone. Can’t imagine why they didn’t sell well; I like mine fine, and find I do only about 20% of my travel in gas-mode.
And they are relatively cheap on the used market. The Volt is still awesome. I'm considering upgrading our 2017 to a 2019 (the last year they made it). But at 130,000kms ours is still getting 100km per charge in summer (70km in winter). Ours is a family car and we do less than 10% in gas mode.
That was the BMW i3 with range extender. But also it seems discontinued in 2022.
Although the range extender was a generator for the electrics, so maybe didn’t meet your definition of ICE entirely.
I wanted to buy one but my wife hated the look of it. It seems like car companies used to give their electric cars to design interns and say “draw something that looks like it’s electric”.
> I'm not sure why plugin hybrids are not a thing.... actually, I don't even want a plugin "hybrid" I want an EV that never uses the ICE unless you run out of power, then it's just an ICE vehicle entirely...
This is the default setup for mine, it starts on battery unless it's too cold (e.g. today's morning was -22C). Li-Ion batteries don't like cold (or heat), esp. don't like charging at negative temperatures.
In short they are a thing, and a rather pleasant one; as a side bonus the combined power of the two engines is quite nice, e.g. taking large trucks at two lane roads (pedal to the metal does engage both engines)
Whe I priced them out, PHEVs were such a premium over regular hybrids that they didn't really make sense. I figured if I bought a Prius Prime and got my catalytic converter stolen just once, I'd have bee better off financially just buying an above average (in cost) EV
You get very little benefit with a plugin hybrid compared to just a hybrid or battery-electric vehicle. You have a very complex drive train, double the amount of motors, fuel tank, batteries, you get the idea. What you end up with is usually a very inefficient vehicle in all scenarios.
> talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect
I think the quote you highlighted explicitly mentions that they meet the daily range needs but "struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge".
> 93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips that are beyond the range of an electric car. It's no wonder that 73% of drivers have range concerns-- no one is concerned with the EV getting through their commute, they're concerned with the EV getting them to their distant family / weekend trip / vacation home / etc.
Yah, policymakers should push PHEVs harder as an interim strategy. They can be effectively electric cars most of the time but have the versatility to make road trips easier.
Yeah, that's why the little commuter style cars don't really sell in the US. Sure, we normally do <40, but sometimes even "local" means going to a nearby town and doing 80-150 miles. And DCFC is not necessarily nearby, and not necessarily fast for a car with only 50-80 miles of range.
That's a big part of why the American consumer really wants a 3 digit number starting with 3. Anything else is a much harder sell.
As EVs become more common, that might shift to a 3 digit number starting with 2. Tesla is already having some success here with the base Model 3, which is by far their best value.
Perhaps not coincidentally, it road trips pretty decently too.
How many trips are done alone? And yet people don't buy single-seater cars. People also don't draw boat or horse trailers most of the time, yet they buy cars as if that was all they ever did. The reality is that car purchases have been driven by very rare usage scenarios, often even by completely hypothetical usage scenarios ("what if I'd have to compete on Nürburgring?“) long before the topic of BEV came up.
The only way I see to change that pattern, outside of getting rid of cars completely, is a full switch from ownership (or "ownership" aka leasing) to fine-grained rental.
I'll postulate people don't buy single seater cars because they don't exist. (At least in the US?)
I've long wished for a very small single seater car, something under 1000lb, only needs a tiny engine so it could have very high MPG and yet still be very fun.
My theory is that edge cases are the really important cases and that's why people give it a pretty large weight. Plus vehicles that burn gasoline are "old and boring" techs that many HN users do agree with.
While 93% of trips are less than 30 miles...I bet the percent of miles travelled on longer trips are significantly higher. I'm probably 80-90%% miles travelled for trips longer than 30 miles (I also work from home, which skews this a bit higher, but even when I was working in an office, it was at least 50% miles on longer than 30 mile trips). I'd still go EV (with a long range battery) if there were more charging infrastructure and more reasonable EV options. But there just isn't yet, so I'm in a hybrid (because the payback vs. ICE only was something like 2 years!). Would have gone PHEV too if there was anything available when I bought my car, but there wasn't.
Do a 700 mile roadtrip through the center of the US in an EV in the middle of winter and you'll understand why I have range anxiety around EVs. I have range anxiety in my gas powered car in a few spots in the US and there are many more gas stations than there are charging stations! I'd absolutely buy an EV as a second car for my more local trips right now...but I don't need a second car and the production carbon costs of a car outweigh the gas carbon costs of not having a second car (not to mention the economic costs of having a second car!). Eventually once the second hand market improves, that around town+ EV might make sense for me to have. But not until then (but by that time, charging infrastructure should be highly improved and it might make sense to go full EV!).
> 93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips that are beyond the range of an electric car.
We've been happy with two cars. Our main around town car is the electric car, with limited but sufficient range. The second car is ICE and is used for road trips.
It's a good mix for us, but I do expect as the charging system is built out, the second car will eventually be replaced with an electric car. After all, the ICE has 100ish years of infrastructure build out that is going to need to be rebuilt for the transition.
> The argument is a clear strawman; it's playing down what people have genuine concerns with and focusing on the range aspect that's obviously unimportant
It’s not a strawman if suddenly it costs hundreds more to rent a car to go visit the grandparents for the holidays. That doesn’t scale either because everyone will want a long range vehicle for holiday travel, making costs for them soar and availability drop.
The whole line of questioning reeks of "I am smarter and know more about your use cases than you do. And if you don't listen to me, you are stupid or wrong objectively".
My car is 40+ years old. If I rented a car every 300 mile trip I would need to be rich. Gas is relatively inelastic cost so a old reliable can be really cheap to keep around
> 93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips
But they still take these occasional trips, and getting there in an expected way is important to people.
So I think the relevant statistic is not what % of trips are short, but what % of owners take a trip that may induce range anxiety once every few years or more? If I knew I had a big road trip planned for two years from now it'd still affect my choice for a new car today, if I felt that I might be limited by range.
I think the article does speak towards this somewhat. For example:
> The focus on increasing EVs' range is contributing to their relatively high prices. Unlike with gas cars, the more you pay for an EV, the more range you can expect to receive.
That's partially true. The most fuel efficient vehicles have traditionally been the cheapest cars, those given small engines and the least amount of heavy noise dampening and luxury items. But it's not always true that paying more for an EV will get you more range. $70-90k for a F150 Lightning will get you less range than a smaller, less expensive Hyundai Ioniq 6. Within classes / makes, though, it's generally true that you pay more for more range, which is a flip from ICE. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/longest-range-evs-2023/
> EVs can be an important part of the fight against the climate crisis, but America's EV plan needs to lean into what these cars do well: short daily trips that can be taken in small, affordable cars. People who frequently take long trips can take advantage of hybrid cars.
Hybrids by themselves already make a good deal of sense. While some may argue that the complexity could reduce reliability, the Prius has actually been one of the most reliable vehicles you can buy. Maybe your daily driver does not need to be your "everything for every situation" vehicle.
But this is an old argument we'll likely never win against the American car buying public. SUVs (and increasingly large ones) already do almost everything you could ever need, even if the vast majority of the time, all they do is move a single person around. And the same can be said for those huge 4 door trucks (with small beds).
In two-car families, I don't see why this is an issue. Why not make sure the second car is a hybrid for any longer trips.
I guess the only concern there is if one is already out and about in their EV and suddenly need to go further. But then that's what charging stations are for and, unless I'm wrong, one can charge up enough in 20 minutes.
I agree, but Tesla's charging network actually works, has lots of stations, and charges batteries reasonably quickly. Now that other manufacturers are adopting it, the range issue seems mostly solved, for anyone who doesn't travel long distances so frequently that a few extra minutes per trip are a serious burden.
My Skoda Enyaq has a range of around 350 km ( 100% -> 20% ), using a 300kv charger the car is fully charged pretty fast.
I have traversed Germany in the north south axis quite comfortably.
The thing can pull a trailer, max distance is less but I only need to go the local hardware store.
I think those concerns overall are unfounded for most of us.
> My Skoda Enyaq has a range of around 350 km ( 100% -> 20% )
I'm actually curious about this. Say I where to drive with the AC on, 130kmph, outside temperature of -5C. What would you say the range is under these circumstances? Still 350km?
Yes under ideal conditions my setup has 4xxkm reach ( it claims 5xx , but I guess that means depleting the battery completely, which is not smart) . 3xx is during winter including winter tires etc.
Summer usage is 17kWh per 100 km, winter usage 21-25 kWh per 100 km. Battery is 100 kWh.
That is 0.342 FoBpF ( firkins of butter per furlong ) in summer and 0.422-0.503 FpF in winter on a battery of 1kFoB, if you prefer imperial units
I never measured reach with a trailer. I only use it to haul lumber from the wood or buy heavy stuff close by.
Ok, that makes sense. So 25kWh would be the "whole shebang" (winter tires, heating, etc, etc). That's actually decent.
I'm too much of a coward and I'll wait for the infrastructure to mature and for 120-150kWh batteries to become cheaper and more commonplace, though :-)
Anecdata: We have a model Y, and find that in the city it's an incredible car. We couldn't be happier. For road trips, it's definitely slower and more stressful because charging takes longer and the car by default stretches things out sometimes making it feel risky, especially in winter.
When I was car shopping after my car was totaled last year I worked out that at my then-current millage (90 miles per day 4-5 days per week) getting the cheapest electric car that would meet my needs would cost be about as much per month (payment, insurance, electric) as the cheapest ICE vehicle ONLY if I maintained that amount of daily milage. Any less than that and the electric option would start be more expensive because the base payment + insurance would be so expensive it would eat up most of the monthly cost.
Also renting a car for a day/overnight trips sucks. I used to live like two blocks from an Enterprise during the 7 or so year range that I didn't own a car and experience was always awful the 1-2 times a year I'd have to do it. The availability of vehicles was always terrible, the people working there were scummy, pickup would take 30-60 minutes every time. My last time there really sucked and their "remedy" was a 10% coupon off my next rental, which never happened.
> this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems
This just about sums it up. Even the best EVs today present a combination of strengths and limitations that mean they can't replace any given ICE car - only some of them.
I didn't buy my ancient gas-guzzling Lexus because it's good at doing things a public bus can do. I bought it because it's good at taking me into the sticks to see my loved ones.
The problem with EVs has little to do with the powertrain at this point. The biggest barrier is infrastructure. I need to be able to charge this thing anywhere along an interstate, without specifically planning every single stop ahead of time. We can figure out charging times later, just get the damn stations out there so we at least have something.
Range anxiety is solved by building out charging infrastructure. There's no range anxiety once you can rely on there being fast, convenient, reliable charging stations along all the routes that you will conceivably travel on. If you're running low then you just stop and charge wherever, and whenever, it's convenient.
You'd have range anxiety about gas cars, too, if there wasn't a reliable network of filling stations on the routes that you are travelling!
when people buy a car, they usually want an all-purpose car, to be able to do long trips as well. Usually, there is no room in a city for two cars, and there is no possibility of relying on rental cars during vacation/mid-term breaks, as everybody wants to borrow a car at that time.
Hence, having a long-range car makes sense for them and me, especially because my city wants to expel gas cars anyway.
I don't see how this is based in reality. You're running low on gas? You go find a node in the gas station network.
Battery running down? Go find a Supercharger station. If you're in a Tesla, it will even route to these automatically. It will tell you in advance how many chargers are operational, and how many are occupied, and it will reroute to a less busy station if available.
Finding working-as-advertised chargers appears to be hard if not downright impossible. The situation does appear to be a little better if you own a Tesla, but if you own most any other make of EV you're going to have a bad time. From a hard requirement of a third-party app to pay, chargers using cables that do not meet spec, outright broken charging stations, issues with the apps themselves, and so on. Aging Wheels did an excellent video[1] on how frustrating the experience can be.
It's a shame charging infrastructure seems to lag so much. In Norway (and more broadly in Europe), I don't even think about range any more, even on multi-day road trips. There's enough charging to never take you too far out of your way, and the stops are actually really refreshing. I can understand anxiety if it's not that easy, though.
It's not just single trips - sometimes it's the cumulative distance of multiple trips throughout the week. Sometimes I can't charge in my garage or just the fact that charging is slow and I can't get a full charge in before leaving again causes the range to go down over time.
Luckily I drive a plug in hybrid but it still is an issue!
I have driven from Seattle to Houston in an EV. On a couple odd trips it was more convenient than gas because everything is electrified and there are chargers that work off of 220v plugs.
But of course people feel concerned, they always do when they go from the familiar to the unfamiliar, or when they organize trips that make it difficult to get timely help.
I hope that what we’ll see happen is charging stations become more family friendly. Clean facilities, and things for the kids to do to get the wiggles out. I think range concern would go away if people didn’t picture themselves sitting in their car for 30 or so minutes waiting for a charge every few hours.
Give me a decent public transportation grid for my day-to-day commute, and I will only use my car for where a train cannot take me. For obvious reasons, it will be an HEV or a PHEV. Well-planned and well-funded public transport will obviate the need for e-waste nut buckets with a range of wind-up toys.
I don’t get it. I own a Model 3 and I’ve done road trips from home (NL) to Paris and south Germany. Paris is especially easy with one single stop at a supercharger next to places to get food.
If people would choose not to get an EV because of having to make one single stop then they’re idiots.
I've taken many road trips across and around Texas in a Model Y.
Superchargers are so dense on the major roads in Texas you don't even need to plan ahead: You just get in the car and drive, like in an ICE car. On smaller roads you have to plan a bit but Level 2 chargers are common. If I stay with friends, I charge in their driveway and leave the next day with a full "tank." Charging in Texas is a non-issue unless you're visiting very remote places like Big Bend NP.
As well, my perception is that Texas has been slow to install charging stations. I had a very difficult time finding an available charging station for a Mustang Mach-E rental car in San Antonio, and I ultimately returned it well below the level which they consider to be full - 70%, I believe. It was the holidays, but I suspect it would be painful any time of year.
Two supercharger stops. You'd probably need to make one gas stop in an ICE car for those kind of distances.
Discussing the state of charging infrastructure is one thing. But if you have a Tesla then there are superchargers everywhere. The whole argument is FUD, usually propagated by people who don't own EV's or have some agenda.
You can downvote me all you want, it doesn't win or lose the argument.
Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me that the fact that you need an extra coffee break whenever you drive for more than 4-5 hours at a time is ostensibly such a huge inconvenience, but somehow the fact that you never need to go to a gas station at any other time doesn't matter.
In the real world, I've never met an EV owner who didn't prefer it to a gas-guzzler, so I'm somewhat skeptical of the number of people on social media who claim to have returned theirs.
Not downvoting personally. But the charging situation on the ground in Texas is hit or miss. If you’re along major interstates and major metropolitan areas you’re fine. You might have to wait for an hour for an open spot but you’ll get charged eventually.
But once you start going to many of the smaller cities you have to start taking longer routes to get to chargers and make weird detours and backtrack from chargers to get to your route.
Same with many tourist destinations outside the major cities.
Friends that tried to go pure EV and didn’t live their lives entirely in one city have inevitably had to buy a second gas car or truck. Because those “occasional” issues show up a lot in Texas.
My personal main concern is the emergency situations where the grid is down or there are mass evacuations. After hurricanes entire highly populated of the state can be without power for weeks. The area I live in now to be near my ailing parents regularly has power issues. I can bring in gas from outside the area to last a while but I can’t bring in a high voltage source.
People have range anxiety because the electric range estimates are just that - estimates. If not lies. I have a '22 RAV4 Prime. I had a '17 Volt for 3 years before that. I'm aware of how it works. Here's real world for you, NW Arkansas: I'm 24 miles from Lowe's round trip. 11 miles freeway, the rest is country highway. 42 miles of "range" on my RAV4 this time of year, when I return home I have 6 to 7 miles remaining. It's off by 20% or more.
Do you think I could go to Tulsa and back, 212 miles round trip, this Saturday in an all electric thing? Cherokee turnpike for a large portion of it, cruise control at 82 mph.
I think a lot of you city dwellers need to re-examine how you think "flyover states" work. But I know you won't, as you don't care about us, so you'll just keep these wrong thoughts in your head pushing policy on us from afar. It's working great for relations in our country so far, keep it up.
Range, time it takes to fuel my car at a station (3 minutes to pull up & pump n go) vs. time to charge an EV fully and gas station infrastructure (oodles & in ever nook & cranny in the US) vs. EV charger infrastructure (no way the same).
If the trip is beyond the range of the EV you can just recharge it on the way. This does cost you more time, but only for road trips. Your fallacy is to assume that road trips are impossible if they can't be done within a single charge.
You are correct, and this highlights the biggest challenge of our time (in my opinion): people are not ready to make compromises on their lifestyle, even if it is proven that this lifestyle is unsustainable and threatens the future of humanity.
Range is an issue for me. I commute by public transport or bike. I only use the car for relatively long weekend trips (3/4 hours, 300+km).
For these trips, stopping halfway for charging makes no sense: I don't want to add another 30m to the trip. At the destination there is generally no charging infrastructure. If there was, that would be the only point I would consider for charging.
Charging infrastructure is still underdeveloped. I see many parking spaces converted to EV charging where the electricity cost is often double of your house utility cost, to the point that almost noone charges in such places if they can avoid. The utter nonsense of the app requirements for every single charging place.
Renting a car here is just a PITA. Go to the rental place, for which I need a car or public transport, waste 30 to 60m to get paperworks signed and car checked. I considered selling my car and just renting to get rid of the maintenance, but it turns out it's cheaper to get a used car like I do if you do at least one of such trips per month.
On top of this, EVs are still too expensive. I never bought new cars in the first place, so I'll be looking at EVs when the used marked starts to fill up with something at the same cost level of used ICE, factoring for the battery degradation.
People mention ICE maintenance, but honestly in my last 2 ICE cars, the engine was never a problem. It's usually everything else that starts breaking too often, requiring too much maintenance.
It's also missing the biggest point: no charger at home. I live in an apartment building, there are no chargers. I would be worried about my commute, since I would be driving to the other side of town for the rare public charger
The last time I bought a car, this was the reason why I picked gas - I figured either the infrastructure for roadtripping would be there by then, or we'd have better range.
Since then, I stopped doing as many roadtrips. Tesla also decided to open up its charger network and everyone is switching to NACS, so the infrastructure is way better. I'd say I'm ready for EVs now, except the car industry decided that electric vehicles inherently have to come with lots of anti-repair bullshit. The same kind that I already find disgusting in consumer electronics. So long as gas equals I own it and electric means I'm renting it, I'm not """buying""" an EV, even though they're otherwise great.
> However, experts are warning the growth rate in electric vehicle uptake isn’t strong enough, particularly with private car buyers, to reach the 22% target without greater incentives such as a cut in VAT on public charging and a more robust charging network
Yeah - you need robust charging network to incentivize more uptick in electric cars. Everyone knows that. This is classic. We can't handle 100% of use cases yet, so we're doomed.
I have a Model Y. I think there's a ton of disingenuous discourse concerning EV range.
Tesla will say that it has, idk, 310 mile range or something. It never has this range, period.
- You cannot run it down to 0%, much like you can't run a gas car to 0% and then be stuck on the side of the road.
- You cannot run it to really even 10%, because you're advised that this is stressful on the battery, and while there is high probability of a gas station within 30 miles of anywhere in the US, there is near-zero probability of there being accessible and reliable public EV charging. If it is cold out, the vehicle will advise you to never let it drop below 20%.
- You cannot really charge it to 100%, because you're advised that anything above 80% is stressful on the battery, supercharging above that level is quite slow (its oftentimes actually faster to just stop at 80% and also charge at the next supercharger, and the Tesla nav knows this, which is quite cool). Some superchargers will even charge you extra for going above 80%, if they're crowded.
- What this means is that, functionally, you're not dealing with 100% of the battery / 310 miles of range. You're working with 60% of the battery (80%-20%) / 186 miles of range. On the top of the line EV humanity makes. On long trips, you can eek that up a bit to maybe 70% of the range, but realistically given the distance between superchargers, its not going to make a difference.
I just hate this line: "Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars"
Who did this? Who promised every single American that they can replace their gas car with an EV and have the exact same utility in every single aspect of their life with it? The author is literally making up their own narrative as they go.
Long trips in an EV are not impossible, they are just a little more hassle and take a bit longer because you need to take a route that has chargers. If you don't do these trips weekly, imo, the benefits of an EV outweigh these negatives.
Another way to say "this is a strawman argument on range concerns" is to say "some people use their car as a primary mode of transportation, and struggle with normal issues with combustion engine car reliability... they aren't going to overpay for a less functional product, which may have other unknown concequences".
The majority of people don't know or care how their car works, they are busy with life.
Being dismissive of real and tangible concerns is a luxury of excess. Electric cars are fine in CA context, but there are plenty of learning curves with these cars. I've tried to rent an electric for rental car use when taking road trips to see how bad it is... Hertz has almost given up on Teslas and Lucid has started giving several to Enterprise and others to rent them out.
If you cant plug it in everywhere you park, for example in Colorado, there are some huge inefficiencies like battery heating/cooling losses which impact range up to 2x.
We’ve road-tripped over much of the American West in our Tesla. The range issue is indeed FUD - it’s really not a big inconvenience to stop and charge while you’re eating, sleeping, or stretching your legs.
We thought we’d take the gas car on those longer trips, but the trip is comfortable enough that we take the EV despite the charging stops.
I have high hopes that the NACS standardization and Tesla’s growing supercharger network will put range anxiety to rest for good.
> the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips that are beyond the range of an electric car. [...] no one is concerned with the EV getting through their commute
In a prosperous society, the economic activity that you describe (daily commute, occasional trip) is important. Commuting keeps workers working, and trips are part of people's quality of life.
So let's agree with your point that consumers are choosing the type of vehicle that will meet all their needs.
At the same time, US car manufacturers know their business well and have not delivered small EVs or small hybrid vehicles because the manufacturers have chosen to aim at Tesla's demographic (i.e. rich and "spendy"). It's clear that physics absurdities like the F150 Lightning or the Dodge RAM "RAM charger" are also aiming at rich and spendy customers. US manufacturers are delivering "autobesity".
The daily commute is a dire source of pollution, though.[1a , 1b]
And the combustion engine is also having dire health effects on society, therefore economic effects. At scale, combustion engines are bad for the environment and bad for people. [2]
We can understand that a topologically large country or US state can't build extensive public transportation as easily as a small country. Trains and subways are expensive. Parking and roads are "easier" to build. But parking and roadways are more of the same problem at scale.
The estimated 100 million daily trips in combustion engines are responsible for a significant amount of pollution in the US, contributing to asthma, lung cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's disease. [3]
A right-sized selection of EVs and PHEVs would make a big difference to people's quality of life and economic prosperity. But maybe the message needs to be delivered better and more clearly.
> At the same time, US car manufacturers know their business well and have not delivered small EVs or small hybrid vehicles because the manufacturers have chosen to aim at Tesla's demographic (i.e. rich and "spendy"). It's clear that physics absurdities like the F150 Lightning or the Dodge RAM "RAM charger" are also aiming at rich and spendy customers.
They're aiming at it because like almost everything (including ICE cars), you need to make it work before you make it cheap.
> The argument is a clear strawman; it's playing down what people have genuine concerns with and focusing on the range aspect that's obviously unimportant.
The author is free to disagree about whether a particular consumer’s concerns are reasonable.
If some particular consumer believes that an EV would have numerous significant benefits for their every day driving, but is concerned that a single weekend trip per year will take an hour longer with an EV due to charging, the author is free to have the opinion that this consumer is not weighing those benefits and costs in a reasonable way.
The bigger strawman is that range is the biggest consideration. ~300 miles is plenty when charging takes 15min. Especially given that most charging happens at home, saving time vs going to a gas station every week.
The reason EV owners keep pushing back against this argument is that the experience of owning one often (obviously not always) leads to a massive recalibration of what you thought you cared about.
Road trips was something that was I was worried about when making the purchase in 2018, and it turned out to be a complete non-issue. In all that time, I have waited for a charger exactly once, for under 5 minutes, because we decided to stop at a busy outlet mall. During road trips, I'm not going to argue that we don't spend more time charging than we would stopping for gas, but it's not enough to bother me or my family, and if we include getting snacks or a bathroom break, the car is ready to go before we are.
It is wildly offset by the convenience of never having to fill up the car outside of those occasional road trips. People in the comments are talking about gas cars as the ones where you just get in and go without having to think about it -- there's very much a mirror image of that situation with an EV. When I had a gas car, fueling it was a constant chore. I had to think about it orders of magnitude more often. It simply doesn't come up with our EV. Every time it leaves the house, it does so with hundreds of miles of range. The idea of getting another car where I have to watch the gas gauge is almost reason enough that I'm going to stick with electric forever.
It is absolutely true that my experience is highly dependent on where I live, the kind of use I have for a car, the places I go, resources available to me, and just dumb luck. Others' mileage, literally, may vary. I'm not trying to sell you on this. It's just really easy to overestimate the importance of EV range.
> I'm not going to argue that we don't spend more time charging than we would stopping for gas, but it's not enough to bother me or my family, and if we include getting snacks or a bathroom break, the car is ready to go before we are.
The concern is that as adoption of EVs increase, the availability of places where one can charge on a journey outside of one's home range will not keep up with demand. I hope it becomes a non-issue, but I am hesitant to commit until it is clear it will not be.
At some point, there will be a tipping point where finding gasoline becomes the harder problem, but hybrid technology seems to me the most pragmatic way to get over the hump, if there will be one.
> The concern is that as adoption of EVs increase, the availability of places where one can charge on a journey outside of one's home range will not keep up with demand. I hope it becomes a non-issue, but I am hesitant to commit until it is clear it will not be.
This is the opposite of my experience. There are way more superchargers now than there were when I bought my car in 2019. Road trips are much easier. I worry about charging/waiting much less.
From the Bay Area, where Teslas are as common as Camrys, tons of people travel to the Tahoe basin for the holidays. I just did so last week. Charging was a complete non-issue even during this cold, extremely popular time.
And if you think about it, the same argument could be made about gas stations, that given how many ICE cars are on the road, places where you can fuel up on road trips will not keep up with demand — and is also not a reflection of reality.
Well see this is the thing. I think a lot of people make comments on these topics with a LOT of misconceptions which would be cleared up if they actually had an EV.
So honestly, while I think pure EVs are already good enough now, I think the solution is to just tell people to buy plugin hybrids. If it's like the Volt, they'll almost never use the engine, and when they do they'll wish it was pure EV. So it's perfect training wheels for a full EV. No range anxiety whatsoever, other than the desire not to use gas.
A (non-plug-in) hybrid has been good for me; quiet on electric power on city streets, and can do over 400 miles without refuelling. It claims to be in EV mode over half the time when commuting.
Fuel consumption is 65 mpg compared with 45 mpg in a similar petrol-only car I had 10 years ago.
Electric only would be nice, if I could afford one which could manage 300 miles minimum, accounting for cold weather, battery wear and manufacturers' lies/exaggerations.
Get a plug-in hybrid. If you're actually getting 65mpg, you're easily going to get the manufacturer's specs for electric range. (This one sort of ticks me off, because it's criminally misreported in the mainstream media... it's like people aren't aware the EPA exists or think they're failing at their jobs...)
When it's time to replace the current car I'll look into that again, but not yet.
I am actually getting 65 mpg on occasions when I'm not in an hour-long traffic jam in freezing weather (then it's 50-55), but I'd forgotten about the difference between Imperial and US gallons, so 65 would be 54 for Americans.
I recently carpooled to the airport multiple hours away with someone with an EV. We got stuck in unexpected traffic, had to pull over to charge, and we missed the flight.
Sure, EVs work for 98% of trips. But they really suck for the 2% of trips where you’re driving 3 hours to+from an airport through a busy city where chargers are difficult to find.
And then there’s the experience of taking a 20 minute detour to go to a charger, only to find they’re all in use. This experience is even worse as a passenger in someone else’s EV because all you can think is “god I wish we could just pull over and fill up the tank”
I love EVs for short trips, but as a late adopter I’ll be waiting for range annd battery improvements before buying one.
Charging infrastructure and speed would mitigate that as well. Driving 3+ hours is going to cut it close on many combustion cars’ ranges too, but gas stations are ubiquitous and almost always have gas. When they don’t, you get the gas crises we’ve seen around the world when supply or delivery runs low.
> If there's any direct inspiration for the United States' EV policy, it's Norway. As the story goes, Norway introduced some compelling subsidies for EVs
Ah yup... Norway, sitting on gigantic oil reserves. Reserves so huge they could decide to just give the finger to the EU and not join. So huge there's a fund benefiting, AFAIK, all Norway citizens.
I'm not criticizing Norway. But citing Norway as some kind of EV posterchild is quite hilarious when it's their oil business subsidizing EVs.
Besides that the "heavier = bad for the road" (which TFA hints at) is pure non-sense: a regular car or a car twice the weight of the regular car will do exactly jack shit to damage the road. The damages are proportional to the root of the weight and it's the real heavy vehicles, like loaded semis at 80 000 pounds, that do damage highways and roads. It's not even clear if non-loaded semis even make a dent.
In Europe, on three-lane highways, the left lane (the fast one, where semis never drive) are never damaged. It's always the right lane and the middle lane (when trucks overtake) that are damaged.
An EV can be 1.5x the weight of a similarly sized ICE car: won't damage the road more. Doesn't even register.
It's a lie told by those who want, like the EU, to impose a tax on weight (because with EVs they see their gigantic taxes on gasoline/diesel go down the drain and they need to bleed people another way: so they're selling this made-up narrative that EVs do damage the road).
TFA has many flaws. Those ones plus the ones highlighted by other comments. A poor article.
P.S: FWIW I drive an ICE car but I don't think it's OK to beat on EVs like that...
> The damages are proportional to the root of the weight
No, road damage is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight. So a car that's 50% heavier will do 5x the damage to the road. (Assuming the same number of axles.)
Loaded semis also have far more axels, so your math is just wrong out the gate.
Another factor that I haven't seen addressed is that Passenger vehicles are much more apt to dive on the brakes to stop. My observation is that roads fail first where people are slamming on the brakes.
> My observation is that roads fail first where people are slamming on the brakes.
It's possible you're getting deceived here, because the highest wear road surfaces are made from more durable material, and areas where drivers might need to slam on the brakes often have high friction surfaces, which are more wear-prone.
So the industrial area where dozens of fully laden 18-wheelers are making sharp turns every day gets paved in the most durable concrete mix possible, the school zone pedestrian crossing approach gets a high-grip sandpaper-like surface, and a few months later it looks like the school zone is getting a lot more wear.
Highly unlikely given that the observation is relative to the roads in the immediate vicinity. This is very observable on flat off-ramps. the last ~200 feet before the stop at the end of the off ramp will get ruts within a year or two, but the rest of the off ramp is fine and the other side of the road where cars are accelerating is just fine.
How does one get a four in an exponent here? Is there a link to the math?
Edit : cool link below, but includes the disclaimer
“The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts, since the test results depend on many other factors, such as climatic conditions, in addition to the factors mentioned above.”
Mind that Norway is a lot smaller, only 5.5M inhabitants, thus per capita the oil revenue is a lot higher. Also in Norway less of the money is going to few private corporations, but to the state, which invests large parts into profitable pension funds, which gives Norway stellar financials and the ability to invest and subsidize into whatever future endeavors they see, like transition to EVs, as they see that oil supplies will tighten up.
> Also in Norway less of the money is going to few private corporations, but to the state, which invests large parts into profitable pension funds,
If only other oil-producing countries had the ability to exploit their oil reserves for their own benefit instead of just giving it away to a few private corporations...
So the argument isn't that Norway is rapidly adopting evs because they have large oil reserves, the argument is that Norway is adopting evs because they setup their oil reserves so the profits benefit everyone and not just big corporations.
Lots of American Exceptionalism in this comment and the replies.
The Norwegian state makes so much money off of oil because of how well they manage the revenues. The US could do the same thing but chooses not to.
The difference between the US and Norway isn’t in the amount of fossil fuel reserves one possesses vs the other. It is in how the money from those resources is used. The US privatizes it while Norway puts it towards the public good.
Their oil per citizen is not equivalent. Norway is producing 0.38 barrels of oil per day per citizen, while US is 0.034. That's over an order of magnitude difference. Could the US do better? Yes. Is Norway well run and has an abnormally high amount of oil per citizen? Yes of course. Yet your claim is still mostly false if US was run just as well.
That is like comparing a toddler to Usain Bolt in a race and saying the toddler could have done better.
The US isn’t even trying to manage any money from its resources in a way that benefits its citizens in the long term. Americans should be furious about how poorly managed the wealth from these natural resources is being managed, but instead seem to think that America is too different from Norway to even consider doing a similar sovereign wealth fund. The same bad arguments get made about healthcare all the time.
> The US isn’t even trying to manage any money from its resources in a way that benefits its citizens in the long term
Different goals. Gas is and has always been (afaik) cheaper for American citizens than for Norwegians. Having more money in your pocket is a long term benefit for Americans.
I don't think we (Norway) should be a poster child for EVs. Or, we've done great in increasing their share, but at what cost? Changing cars from ICE to EVs doesn't really solve most of the problems cars pose to our society. The money poured into this each year could've built so many new railways, metros, supported public transport for decades etc.
The population count is an argument that puts the US in a further negative light: They stand to gain significantly more due to how economies of scale work than a country with only 5 million people does.
> Besides that the "heavier = bad for the road" (which TFA hints at) is pure non-sense: a regular car or a car twice the weight of the regular car will do exactly jack shit to damage the road.
This is not bullshit. Road damage scales as the _fourth_ power of the axle weight. BTW, that's also why buses and heavy tracks are so damaging. One bus does can easily do the same damage as several thousand cars.
I think that's why EVs don't really affect the road. You could double the weight of every car in the country, and it would increase road wear by like 3% because of how ridiculously disproportionately large vehicles cause it.
Norway is deservedly the "poster child "because 90% of their sales are BEV, buddy.
And it's not a ludicrous amount of money that can only be funded by oil sales that is being spent on EVs. It's a drop in the bucket compared to US expenditure on auto infrastructure.
Flagged for misleading clickbait. The article says that the growth rate has slowed, yet the title says sales are declining.
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed
The most disingenuous part of this article is labeling a slowing growth rate (which is still a very healthy double digit percentage growth rate) to “fewer people buying” electric cars.
That’s not how growth works.
It also needs to be pointed out that the auto industry as a whole is slowing down.
The other thing that needs to discussed is interest and financing. This is a terrible time to buy any car. I’m not personally going to get into a 7% auto loan if I don’t have to. I think a lot of people are waiting.
If borrowed $50,000 for a car in 2021 your payment was $834 a month (0% interest).
That same payment with a typical 5% new car loan will knock $6,000 off the sticker price of what you can afford.
Essentially, cars are 15% more expensive than they were two years ago just when talking financing.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted (maybe I'm missing something?). I also find the title to be innaccurate given this information from the article:
> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.
And the EV share of new vehicle sales from this other article [0] indeed does show that the percentage of new vehicle sales that are EVs is increasing. Possibly not as quickly as before (but this is hard to tell from this graph).
I had thought there were brands which did not do this.
Turns out Kia, Subaru, Ford, GM all do this already (those are the ones I could quickly find).
Additionally by 2026 all cars will have a kill switch if "they" determine you're impaired. Which could be anything from your blood alcohol level, to your social credit score has dropped below a threshold, to a criminal has hacked in, to a disgruntled girlfriend in the FBI can disable the car legally or illegally.
I’ve had my EV for 14 months and 17k miles driven now and haven’t had any repair or maintenance costs at all. There are no micro-transactions because they simply don’t require as much maintenance as a combustion vehicle.
> haven’t had any repair or maintenance costs at all
When you have to replace your battery your repair costs will come in one big lump sum. Your tires and suspension system will require more repair due to the weight of your vehicle.
> There are no micro-transactions
The first few generations of EV do not have them, but the future ones will.
> The first few generations of EV do not have them, but the future ones will.
I have a Bolt EUV 2023 (purchased November 2022) for reference. I can't speak to replacing the battery, tires or suspension system, though. Your statement about the tires and suspension needing more repair due to the weight of the vehicle makes sense to me.
California has banned many things, that are still widely available. If the history of banning things has taught us anything, it's that if you ban gas powered cars; People will build them in their bathtubs.
