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Comment by jp0d | Hacker News Reader

Most farmers depend on their tractors for their livelihood. I reckon it'll be difficult to convince them to shift to electric ones that costs more and haven't got any long term reliability or efficiency reports. If anything, battery powered cars lose a lot of value as their battery capacities tend to decline over time. Also, unless their farm has heavily invested in solar power, they'd still have to use electricity from the grid. In a country like Australia most electricity is generated from coal. So that's not really helping the environment. The EV industry will only last as long as we don't figure out efficient production and transportation of Hydrogen. This is impressive use of ML though.

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>t'll be difficult to convince them to shift to electric ones that costs more

This electric tractor markets itself as having twice the torque of an ICE tractor of a similar size. This means you don't need a bigger more expensive tractor.

>If anything, battery powered cars lose a lot of value as their battery capacities tend to decline over time.

EVs lose in value because of government subsidies. The list price is $30k but you only have to pay $25k because of subsidies. Nobody is going go buy your used EV for more than $25k because they can get a new one instead.

I can understand why I got downvoted. I might have come across as an EV hater. I'm not one. I do appreciate the technology and acknowledge that it's the future. I was pointing out some of the flaws. I don't argue against the torque figures and everyone knows that EVs have more torque. Even the base model Teslas are faster off the line compared to some of the ICE super cars. I'm hopeful that we generate electricity from more renewable sources than burning coal or gas, which defeats the whole purpose. Long charging times, range anxiety and battery longevity are real issues for customers. I don't know if durability of electric motors for these sort of applications haven been proven yet. Hydrogen based EVs can fix most of these problem. But only if we can create Hydrogen more efficiently.

I downvoted you because you are stating things as a fact that are not true, and have not been true for several years.

Modern EV batteries don't loose much of their capacity over time. You probably have your information from old Leafs.

Most people that actually drive EVs I've heard from do not have problems with long charging times. In fact, it only takes a couple of seconds to do most charges (the time it takes to plug it in in your garage). When they are travelling, it does take longer, but for most people it just means a slightly longer coffee break.

Coal is on its way out, and even with coal on the grid, it doesn't actually defeat the purpose, as it is still more efficient than small fossil engines not running at their optimal revs. And it is on its way out!

Hydrogen for cars is not going to happen, outside a few compliance cars. And you'll probably be surprised to learn that you can't fill up a hydrogen car as fast as a gas car.

The main problems holding EV cars back right now are lack of production capacity and upfront cost.

I don't mind if you downvote my comment. That's perfectly acceptable if you don't like my opinion. I respect that. No harm done there. :) It's true that everything I know about EVs are from personal experience of people I know. Believe it or not I'm happy that coal is on its way out. I wish it happened sooner.

My sister owned a Tesla model 3 in California for 3 years. She had a lot of fun in it and used it as a daily commute. You're right that in most cases a regular person won't have any problems. They had problems with long waiting times at superchargers at charging stations during long weekends and public holidays. Once they literally had to wait for hours just to get a chance to charge it. She did lose some battery capacity and sold it.

Hydrogen takes 4 to 5 minutes to fill up as opposed to 30 to 40 minutes for EV with supercharging. There is no comparison there. Also using a fast charger all the times can damage batteries. I'm not saying Hydrogen cars are practical now. They could be in future. I hope it is.

> using a fast charger all the times can damage batteries. Is this actually true?

A Google search suggests that there are lots of studies showing that 25 fast charging cycles wrecks the battery but I have driven my Model S from Norway to the UK and back three times which is about 12 k km altogether and I used Tesla chargers exclusively on the journey. The practical range is about 300 km so I must have charged much more than 40 times in addition to all the times I have charged on journeys from Oslo to Trondheim and back. I haven't noticed any significant degradation in range.

But who actually does it on ordinary days when not doing a road trip? I have had that 2015 Model S for three years and I only use the Superchargers when I know that I will travel more than a couple of hundred kilometre in a day; otherwise I can keep the car charged at home (usually just to 80% unless I plan a long trip and I usually charge again before I get to 20%. Plugging in to an ordinary domestic socket every couple of days is enough and takes seconds.

To be honest I have read it online as well. I don't know if it's true. I reckon if the battery is designed to take fast charging all the time, it should be okay. Another thing that affects batteries is weather. In colder climates like Europe you're probably okay. We have had reports of batteries losing half their capacity due to heat in Australia. Those were all Nissan Leafs, which didn't have any active cooling in place. We don't have an extensive supercharger network either. You'll probably be okay in East coast region. Forget about charging your car, in some remote areas you're probably not gonna get petrol either. You can only get diesel. Seems like EU is far ahead in EV adoption than AU.

Europe varies wildly in uptake of EVs because incentives and infrastructure vary so much. Here in Norway 50% of new car sales are pure EV and there are chargers all over the place. Ten percent of cars in the country are now electric. A lot of petrol stations, particularly Circle K, are installing chargers too.

But in the UK the story is very different, 10% of new car sales and a total of less than 2% of cars are EVs.

The difference is probably down to the taxes on cars. Here in Norway expensive cars are doubly expensive because of progressive taxation on them from which EVs are exempted but in the UK you just get paid back a few thousand pounds by the state when you buy an EV. So here EVs are comparable in cost to ICE cars especially at the expensive end of the price range.

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