Comment by derbOac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derbOac | Hacker News Reader

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FWIW, I think eventually EVs will dominate the market. It's a matter of when, not if (unless hydrogen makes a splash somehow).

The issue with trips is yes, many people don't drive anywhere near that range on a daily per-trip basis. However, people don't buy cars on a trip-by-trip basis, they buy a car to handle the range of regularly encountered transportation scenarios they encounter. So even if people only make, say, 7% of their trips outside the range of an EV, they don't want to go and rent a car to do that if they already own a car. They want to have a car that will do that, plus the one or two trips per week that go well outside that range. They don't want to rent another car every week or two to do that. Add to that a conservative 50% reduction in range in the winter (per Consumer Reports), range is currently a concern.

I guess I just think the range-per-trip metric can be misleading, because that can equate to a relatively large number of trips per time, especially given the expense of a car, regardless of technology.

I pretty often make the drive from SF to Tahoe which requires a supercharger stop for ~40min.

For this distance it's really not an issue. People typically stop once for bathroom or food anyway. The tradeoff of low cost fuel is also a factor.

All the other times an EV is a strictly better experience (not having to go to gas stations, pay gas costs, cleaner, better performance, etc.)

Longer trips outside of that kind of thing are exceedingly rare for the vast majority of drivers (iirc the data correctly).

I don't think it's about renting a car, I just think the supercharger network is at a point where things are good enough today for that kind of use case.

Most of the lower cost hotels in the Tahoe area still don't have charging stations.

There are a few superchargers there, destination chargers aren't that important.

I think non-Tesla EVs are a lot less viable an option for this reason.

Kinda miss the panhandlers though, right? /s

All over the world countries are banning ICE. The US won't because of "muh freedom" but economically it's impossible to keep making them. When China and the EU switch to EV the world will follow.

The US is large enough on its own to keep petro cars running. There won't be as many advances without other markets to subsidize development, but there are enough people to keep things going. What will kill gas in the US is when there is enough charging infrastructure that people believe those 7% trips where you don't charge at home are reasonable, and so they switch their next car.

Once that happens petro will be left to things where nothing else will do. Things like farming, or heavy construction where you are using a lot more energy than batteries can supply: these are already diesel. And a few collectors, but the 1957 Chevrolet is something you only drive in parades anyway.

It be will better for US economy then. At least they don't outsource car production to china.

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