Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

Electric cars are great and all, but there's a few things that keep me from buying one (so far).

First, there's the price. I know that some countries subsidize the purchase of an EV but without such support, electric cars are still targetting the upper end of the market when compared to traditional cars of the same size and with comparable features. Added to this is a latent feeling of mine that an electric car might lose value even faster than traditional cars already do. I mean, we all know from experience with battery powered devices (of the hand-held kind), how batteries deteriorate over time, and I think this impression is inevitably associated with electric cars, too, whether it's actually relevant in practice or not.

Second, but perhaps equally important, is that I currenly live in Europe. And unlike what you may be used to from suburban North America, I neither have a driveway here nor does my house come with an underground parking garage for its tenants. I park on the road. Sometimes quite a distance away from my house. So, charging over night is out of the question - which means that the only option for charging would be at the equivalence of a traditional gas station. Except, short of any super charger infrastructure in my vicinity, I have a hard time imagining spending 30 minutes every time the car runs empty. I have a larger family, and although 30 minutes might not seem much to you, it's definitely a considerable amount of time to me.

I realize there are quite a bit of advantages to EVs, and I would really love to enjoy them. But I just feel that these two points alone are sort of a deal breaker at the moment. I hope things are going to get better, though.

I'm in the market for a new car after living car-free downtown for several years. Interestingly I actually have some anxiety about the resale value of ICE cars - when I sell in 5 or 10 years, the value will be inherently tied to the price of gas, and how widespread the electric car roll-out ends up being.

If gas spikes again like this year and some pending ICE sale and area bans come to fruition... I have trouble seeing ICE valuations keeping up with electric.

That said I'm a bigger proponent of investment in transit over perpetuating car dominance, but that's a different thread to pull on.

In Amsterdam you just charge on the street. Almost every street has 2 or 4 charging parking spots.

Is that also true for rural areas of the Netherlands?

Rural places will only have family houses where you can just have one at home, or request one from the municipality in the street.

It’s all heavily subsidized.

Most office buildings, malls, and (tourist)attractions have stations.

> electric cars are still targetting the upper end of the market when compared to traditional cars of the same size and with comparable features.

There are downmarket electric cars, such as China’s $5000 Wuling Mini EV (https://www.wired.com/story/review-wuling-hongguang-mini-ev/...), which could perhaps best be described as “a golf cart with doors.”

Long-term the most likely charging location will be at work. Electric cars go a long way to solve the "doesn't generate at night" problem of solar, because you can charge them during the day, which generally coincides with being at work.

Also keep in mind that many electric cars have a range in the neighborhood of 300 miles, but the average European drives around 20 miles a day, so you'd only need to charge once every two weeks.

I'm working from home at least three days out of five these days. I cannot imagine going back to a fully corporate work-on-premises model.

Yep, they're definitely not a silver bullet for every use case. Cities have started recognizing the limits to electrification for people with cars and without dedicated parking and have began installing charging infrastructure street-side though, so that's one possible way forward.

https://trojan.energy/products/hub

We bought our Electric (a 2012 Nissan Leaf) in 2015 - after it had come off of a lease and the owner didn't want to buy it out. There were piles of early Leafs on dealer lots. Drivers had finished their leases, which had been incredibly attractive, and they all came up at the same time. So the prices were reasonable, and the cars were really nice (all top trim)

I don't think EVs have commoditized and hit true economies of scale. Aside from the supply issues related to the pandemic, the only thing I see slowing it down is if governments fail to push Automakers to start making more.

Why did that comment get downvoted?

I wouldn't mind owning an EV, but every time I've looked into buying a used one, it's never made more financial sense than keeping my ICV. The same can be said about buying a used ICV, albeit at to a lesser degree.

Millions upon millions of ICVs will remain on the road regardless of any sort of ban on the sale of new ones in the next decade (if that actually comes to fruition). If you can get an EV then more power to you, but a future where enough EVs are on the road that particulate pollution is nearly gone is much further away than people think. This is especially true if existing electrical infrastructure proves to not support millions of electric vehicles charging. I've heard people make up reasons for why the infrastructure isn't a problem, but something about California's handling of the electrical grid doesn't give me confidence.

In the meantime, ICVs should be kept on the road as long as they can no longer function without serious repair. If it's both particulate pollution and climate change people are concerned with, then we can make more progress during the gradual shift to EVs by converting existing ICVs to run ethanol-based fuel like E85.

Hold on to your butts, because there is a TON of misinformation about ethanol fuel. Here's my case for why we should be converting existing ICVs to support ethanol:

- Ethanol is produced from fermenting the starches and sugars from plant material. Those plants pulled carbon out of the atmosphere to make its structure and the carbohydrates.

- Ethanol burns far cleaner than gasoline. The carbon returns to the atmosphere where it just came from, whereas burning fossil fuel releases carbon that has spent millions of years underground. There is always some carbon from ethanol production that doesn't return to the atmosphere. In other words, it's far better for the climate than gasoline.

- Leftover grains from fermentation of ethanol make excellent animal feed. Ethanol production doesn't compete with food production. It creates better food. Anything remaining can be either hydrolyzed to make more ethanol or burned to contribute to the distillation process.

- The vast majority of vehicles manufactured after 2000 can handle a substantial ratio of ethanol with no other changes to the vehicle. Most can run E30 (30% ethanol) without any problems at all, and some even go up to E50.

- Most gas cars are capable of running on E85 with either a conversion kit or even a software update to the ECU.

- Most gas cars don't require changes to the fuel system to run E85. Outside of high performance applications, the only thing that may need to happen is the fuel injectors need to be on a wider pulse width.

- Your vehicle may already be a "Flex Fuel" vehicle and you don't even know it. Many people are unaware of or forgot that they own a Flex Fuel vehicle.

- The gas in your car today already contains 10% ethanol. Modern fuel systems are designed to tolerate ethanol extremely well.

- Unlike gasoline, ethanol doesn't need to contain added carcinogens like "BTEX", benzene, tuolene, etc.

- No, ethanol will not rust your fuel tank or your fuel rail. Ethanol from a gas station is anhydrous.

- No, ethanol won't blow up your engine because of water. Ethanol has to sit a long time to absorb enough water to create a bad situation for your engine. In Brazil, they run cars with hydrous ethanol (~95%) just fine. If there's too much water, it has to have been added when it shouldn't have been.

- Ethanol is a good cleaner. Your engine may have a longer life on ethanol because you won't get carbon deposits like with gasoline.

- Ethanol burns cooler than gasoline. Cooler = better for your engine.

- Ethanol resists engine knocking and early ignition better than gasoline.

- Ethanol production can be decentralized and done on smaller scales.

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Like I said, I think EVs probably will be the eventual future. I don't see them being the majority of vehicles on the road any time soon. Maybe, idk. Until that happens, we need to rethink ethanol fuel if we want to mitigate climate change and air pollution.

Biofuels are basically dead because they cost more to produce than gasoline and people aren't going to accept an increase in energy costs. Electric vehicles are now viable specifically because they have a lower cost per mile than gasoline. The use case for biofuels may be specific applications were electric vehicles haven't been made to work, like aviation.

The average car is around 12 years old, implying that if we replaced all new cars with electric, we'd have replaced at least half of them within 12 years.

Finding a good deal on a used electric car isn't that easy right now because there aren't that many of them, which changes the more new cars are electric.

> Biofuels are basically dead because they cost more to produce than gasoline and people aren't going to accept an increase in energy costs.

That's simply not factual for ethanol.

Also, the blanket term "biofuels" isn't particularly useful here because it can mean many things. I'm talking strictly about ethanol. Not biodiesel, not methanol, not LPNG.

> Electric vehicles are now viable specifically because they have a lower cost per mile than gasoline.

Even if that were to remain true, sorry, I'm not getting another car loan to replace a car that's already working. That's the reality for the vast majority of people. EVs need to come further down in price by far.

> The average car is around 12 years old, implying that if we replaced all new cars with electric, we'd have replaced at least half of them within 12 years.

Half of people aren't going to trade in for EVs within 12 years unless the price is right. The prices for even used EVs aren't anywhere near where they need to be for people who live outside the elite bubble. As long as used cars and aftermarket parts can be sold, people will run all the remaining ICVs into the ground, and that can take a very long time with modern vehicles even when treating them like crap.

> Finding a good deal on a used electric car isn't that easy right now because there aren't that many of them, which changes the more new cars are electric.

Those deals have never been easy to find, but the promise of affordable EVs has always been "just around the corner." I'll wait for EVs to make financial sense in the short term future, but I won't count on it.

> That's simply not factual for ethanol.

It is if you take away the subsidies.

> Even if that were to remain true, sorry, I'm not getting another car loan to replace a car that's already working. That's the reality for the vast majority of people. EVs need to come further down in price by far.

The base Model 3 costs less than the average new car. You don't have to get another car loan, you can keep driving the car you have for another ten years, then buy a ten year old EV which someone else is buying new today.

It's the elites who buy new cars. You still end up driving an EV in ten years.

> Those deals have never been easy to find, but the promise of affordable EVs has always been "just around the corner."

EVs have only very recently been produced in volume and are still only ~6% of new cars, and a far lower proportion of used cars. The thing that makes them affordable as used cars is to be a high proportion of new cars and then wait five or ten years.

> I wouldn't mind owning an EV, but every time I've looked into buying a used one, it's never made more financial sense than keeping my ICV. The same can be said about buying a used ICV, albeit at to a lesser degree.

I've had the opposite problem. I just bought another car, and I saw some great ICE options that seemed really appealing. Very long range, great utility, etc. But when I priced in the cost of gas (currently $3.5 here but it's been much higher as recently as a year ago) versus the cost of the electricity (4.2 cents/kWh in the middle of the night), I couldn't make the numbers work. Given that it's an appliance for the family and not my personal hot rod, I couldn't justify spending extra for ICE. We'll suck it up and deal with DC fast charging on road trips.

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