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Comment by sigmoid10 | Hacker News Reader

There's an even bigger issue that noone seems to get apart from Tesla: Is there actually a market for such a battery? Today's EVs can already be used for normal daily commutes without even thinking at all about range anxiety. That covers 95% of all drives for normal people. And the remaining 5% can be covered with some slightly more sophisticated route-planning. Tesla has already come out and said they could make cars that drive twice as far, but there is no real market for that. And since battery resources are a limiting factor that pretty much grow linearly with range, they rather make twice as many cars.

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Places like Australia has some seriously large distances, with some of the most isolated populations on earth.

Sure it's a small market (most Australians live in their state's capital city), but there needs to be some consideration for those that need serious range. The issue is frequently mentioned when talking about banning ICE vehicles.

Toyota Landcruiser's with auxiliary fuel tanks (over 240 litres) are the workhorses in outback Australia.

Stuff like this is always brought up. And while it is true in principle, it doesn't change the above statement. Almost 90% of Australians live in cities and average distance driven per day by Australians is 30-40km. There will always be a small, single digit percentage market for long haul transport that needs alternatives. But the mass market doesn't need better EVs. That's why range has stagnated over the past years. Noone is willing to pay twice as much for slightly less inconvenience once every 6 months. Sure, if we had a working breakthrough battery that could deliver twice the performance for the same price it would be great, but in reality it would only be great for about 5% of personal traffic.

Yeah, more importantly: until cities are 100% EV, I wouldn't worry about rural. Realistically, we can probably just never worry about it: there are far more cars used in cities then in the country.

In a case where you're trying to get emitted CO2 to zero, you'd probably prefer to just subsidize ethanol and renewable diesel to manage super-long haul to get their - too many tractors and other equipment we also need to run.

In Mexico and Singapore, Nissan introduced the Epower technology which is a hybrid in which the combustion part only serves as generator. All the driving machinery is electrical, and both the mpg and range are great.

In hindsight I think it's an obvious technooogy: the conplexity of the combustion generator is pretty low, doesn't need gearbox, pistols, cylinders and whatnot. And the fuel tank still gives good range NY recharging the battery.

Got a Kicks with this tech, and so far it has been pretty good for both city and the road (5 hr drives to the beach!)

Or why can’t an EV drive up to a gas station and pick up a towable battery to get to the next stop. I’ve heard it’s done in China.

I like the idea of one-way rentals of towable generators. Think a U-haul like model, where you pick one up at a gas station near your origin, and drop it at your destination. Now if EV makers would just allow charging while driving..

It's probably more trouble and cost than it's worth. How many thousands of dollars are you willing to deposit for the use of the battery?

You can rent a pretty near CDL sized truck from UHaul/etc for little trouble. This would represent less than the upfront cost of a truck from the companies POV. They’d only need to worry about the chance people don’t reuturn the batteries. That seems unlikely given the same people would have given all their info up front and are highly likely to need a battery in the future. Vehicle rentals are far more risky and still a daily occurrence.

I’m 100% certain the market could exist. Probably the difficult part is car manufacturers supporting it and possibly some engineering problems (low probability of problems I think).

Every other manufacturer calls this a series hybrid or electric with range-extender.

They have cost challenges - because if you want to drive one at a constant 80 mph on the freeway, you need at least ~50 horsepower of gasoline generator, ~50 horsepower of generator ~ 50 horsepower of generator inverter, ~50 horsepower of motor, ~50 horsepower of motor inverter.

Turns out all of that costs and weighs a lot more than just 100 horsepower of gasoline engine for a similar size car.

Cars like the BMW i3 with range extender undersize their gas engine and generator to save money and weight, yet are getting sued because in worst case conditions (driving up a mountain heavily laden), sometimes the car runs out of battery power and has to rely on gasoline alone, leading to a top speed of only 20 mph - not really usable!

California has bizarre regulations regarding range extenders.

I also don’t see why 50 hp is a good target. The oldest Model S cars can drive on the freeway (at moderate speed) using maybe 25 kW (33 hp). So a 25 kW generator would allow indefinite freeway driving at moderate speed. But almost no one does this except maybe long haul trucks that trade drivers.

IMO the right way to think of it is: a 25 kW generator will almost fully recharge the battery in under 4 hours. If you drive uphill or fast for two hours, and you run that generator, you have an extra 50 kWh. If you want to drive 10 hours (shudder), that’s an extra 250kWh — you should avoided about three long charging stops, so maybe one actual level 3 stop gets you there even if you drive moderately fast.

And you can stop for the night (or sightseeing or whatever, as long as you park outdoors), and you’ll be fully recharged afterwards. I would appreciate a 5kW onboard generator for this purpose!

Tiny engines (ie. sub 20 horsepower) have pretty poor efficiency, and tend not to meet modern emissions requirements (since they haven't been developed with automotive use in mind).

Nobody is putting much R&D into new engine designs.

Lots of countries have laws saying an engine in a car can't be running without a driver present.

For all those reasons, tiny range extenders on large batteries don't tend to exist.

Instead you get moderate or large range extenders paired with smallish batteries (ie. total range 50 miles). And they still have trouble if you drive fast, heavily laden, up a hill, on a hot day for more than the battery capacity.

the conplexity of the combustion generator is pretty low

To add: you can always run the engine at its most efficient rpm, getting the most out of every liter of fuel.

Yes, but you also have the extra weight of the second engine - and you have to transform that mechanical energy to electricity before the electric engine transforms it back to mechanical energy again, which is lossy. So all in all I think it makes sense for long range/remote areas, but I rather would have a fuel cell as a range extension. (which has its own downsides of course)

These hybrids totally fail the reason of EVs, to get rid of the CO2 emissions of combustion engines.

Pretty sure the engine still has pistons and cylinders :)

Here's a nice page explaining the system -- a serial hybrid. https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...

According to the page, you can't plug in these vehicles, is that right?

Chevy Volt was conceptualized as a serial hybrid iirc, but the engine drives the powertrain at higher speeds so it's not a pure serial hybrid. Mazda has a rotary engine based serial hybrid / range extender out or coming out too I believe.

While it’s great to see in a car, this has been the standard technology for locomotives for 70 years.

There are lots of pluses to not having a transmission, and always running your engine in a narrow, tuned, power band

If the only ICE vehicles left are in the outback, we're doing okay.

> If the only ICE vehicles left are in the outback, we're doing okay.

Are you sure? That sounds like Mad Max to me :)

Do these long distances require the driver to drive more than say 6 hours without stopping? If so, why?

It’s a problem of charger infra, not range. We’ve already solved range.

Pretending you can logically deduce what the market most desires based on facts about their lives is a theory that is really far out there

1. Do you have any memory of when SUVs went mainstream? Who'd have thought single women would want to pay the vehicle and fuel premium to commute so inefficiently. Of course men as well.

2. Americans are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety over those limitations, even when the extra cost is very low ROI. Look at data plan, buffet, etc. preferences

You know what's extremely cheap to manufacture? A larger fuel tank. How many mainstream passenger cars are being sold with a >80L (>20 gal) fuel tank because prospective car buyers "are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety"?

Americans are addicted to features, lifestyle and luxury (actual or perceived).

> You know what's extremely cheap to manufacture? A larger fuel tank. How many mainstream passenger cars are being sold with a >80L (>20 gal) fuel tank because prospective car buyers "are addicted to options that remove limitations out of anxiety"?

It takes mere minutes to refill a tank, and there are gas stations everywhere throughout the country. It's quick, and incredibly easy. Far faster than EVs, and far more common that EV charging stations.

As a result, there's really no value in tanks that are that much larger, there's no range anxiety because even going long distance cross-country you're never that far away from a place to refuel.

There is value. One of my cars has a 20 gallon tank and it's nice to go a few extra days without refueling for regular commuting/around town driving, or having the option to go an extra couple of hundred miles on the highway on longer trips.

These mythical Toyota batteries can supposedly run 10 minute stops every 700 miles. That's already way beyond what any normal person could handle.

I'm comfortable doing long distances in one day and even I would be taking 20+ minute breaks every 300km (200mi) or so. The current state-of-the-art long range EVs are plenty good enough with range and charging speeds, assuming a reliable charging network.

Larger fuel tank makes the car heavier and thus less fuel efficient

Additonal 10 gallons of fuel is a rounding error to a typical car mass, its effect on fuel efficiency is not detectable without precise lab equipment. Certainly you're not going to notice that when paying for gas.

Well, I dunno if you've ever driven a performance car say around 420hp but having one extra passenger is absolutely noticable and undesirable, it really slows you down. 4 passengers in the car and it's no longer a fun drive. Not a rounding error as you can directly feel it.

I expect dragging around 120 lbs extra fuel for 100k miles does become noticable on the bank book, you'd be surprised.

My diesel car from 2020 has a 40-ish litre tank and a range of around 500 miles. I just drove back from my holidays yesterday, which took nearly six hours, including three stops for loo breaks, lunch, and looking around a very small museum. It still had half the tank remaining when I got home. I have never had range anxiety with this car.

A range of 745 miles means ten hours of driving in the best of circumstances without a stop. I cannot imagine wanting to drive for ten hours without stopping. I cannot understand why EV manufacturers are putting such large batteries into cars, especially when I hear how much heavier they are making them.

The problem isn’t needing to stop, it’s charge time and availability.

When I stop with an ICE car during a road trip it’s for 15 minutes max and I know I can do it basically whenever I want. With an EV, you have to carefully plan your road trip around fueling.

Roadtripping is much nicer in an EV, IMO. You just set your destination, it tells you where and when to stop, you almost always go to the bathroom and eat at those stops anyway. You never deal with gas station bathrooms, you just pop into a Starbucks or whatever. The car is almost always ready to go by the time you are, or maybe you wait 5-10 minutes.

There's an intuition that the minor additional flexibility gas cars give you on a road trip makes the experience better, but in practice I think it's worse.

Is this with a Tesla on their fast charging network? Most companies are standardizing on their plug type and so on, but I don’t want to buy a Tesla for a variety of reasons.

Yes, but the point is it’s not inherent to EVs, regardless of your preferences.

It's only relevant insofar as fast charging stations have a huge impact on how long you have to wait. The fact that basically only the Tesla network offers this is a pretty big limiting factor.

Yes, but it's not really a limiting factor or fair complaint about EVs in general. It is perhaps a limiting factor for people who only consider non-Tesla EVs and don't want to wait for the Tesla Supercharger network to become available to other brands.

I think there are more buyers than you think that don't want a Tesla.

I shouldn't have to say it again but this is not the point.

Outside of few crazy people no normal people drive 5-6h at a time. If you can get out on the highway, plug in and spend 20min doing basic necessities you are find.

The United States is a huge country and lots of people take road trips with 5-6hr drives. If you live in California you can easily do 5+ hours and not even leave the state.

On most people almost never make such drives. This has been pretty well researched. And those that do most of the time stop and make 15min breaks at least.

So the whole issue is that on very, very long drive you might lost 15min. That not the end of the world.

There are a lot of places in America where you can leave a city and go to a rural place where at best you might have a 120V charge, possibly nothing. An 800-1000 mile range battery takes a lot of the charging anxiety away until the infrastructure for electric catches up to convenience and availability of gas.

The weight issue, however, should be talked about more. I don't think filling highways with 10,000lb minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette is an improvement on the whole.

>The weight issue, however, should be talked about more. I don't think filling highways with 10,000lb minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette is an improvement on the whole.

But they aren't. The "minivans with the acceleration speed of a Corvette" exist today in the ICE world and are very few and far between because of price. You can buy a Lamborghini Urus that does 190mph, or a Range Rover Sport Turbo, or BMW X5. But those cars are all 6 figures++ so very few people can afford them.

Sure, a Rivian R1S can do 0-60 like a Corvette, but Bob down the corner isn't spending $100k on a car, so the ones that accelerate like a Corvette will be exactly as ubiquitous as a Corvette.

Meanwhile the fastest/heaviest Kia EV9 does 0-60 in 6.0 seconds, and weighs 5,700 lbs. Both a far cry from the numbers you're concerned with. Meanwhile a Chrysler Pacifica weighs 4,300 lbs, so the differences most people imagine are GREATLY exaggerated.

The vast majority of the "the vehicles are too fast and too heavy" are scare tactics by oil companies. The F-150 tips the scales at 5,500 lbs and nobody is worried about them "ruining our roads". Please don't buy into the nonsense.

It's not about ruining roads, it's about how deadly heavy vehicles are for the pedestrians they hit.

IIRC average car weight has been stable for ~20 years, not increasing, and also pedestrian deaths have been decreasing over the same period, even as people are buying big weirdo trucks and whatnot. Also, I'd expect increased prevalence of active safety features is more important than the weight of the vehicle for pedestrian safety.

I think neither of these statements are true. Car weight has increased (https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...) as well as pedestrian deaths which have increased 77% in the last 10 odd years (https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-pedestrian-fatalit...)

I suppose you are somewhat right, it's a bit muddier than I remembered and I guess I completely mixed up the pedestrian statistics.

In this source, the increase in car weight seems quite minor over the last 10 years:

https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-... (fig ES-3)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/660493/us-light-duty-veh...

Your link does not support your claim of a 77% increase, but this better source pegs it at 80%, so I suppose that's about right: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

That said, the rate hasn't gone up if you look at a 30-year timeframe, but it's a worrying trend nonetheless. It's a bit confusing though because I think you'd want to look at this per-capita. The absolute numbers show a 10-year upward trend, and the per-capita numbers are only split out by age group and show that same 10-year upward trend except it hasn't gone up at all for people under 20, which seems surprising.

But I remain confused because the 10-year weight increase is very small, less than 10% or so, so it is not clear to me that increasing vehicle weight is the most important factor. IIHS mentions road design and front-end design, but not weight as key factors.

The shape of the vehicle has far, far more to do with pedestrians dying than the weight of the vehicle. I would MUCH rather go over the hood of a 4800lbs Tesla model S going 30mph than under the front bumper of a 3900lbs Tacoma.

When travelling long distances it's also important to derate the range for safety and comfort.

For example, it's well known that EV range decreases by 20-30% in cold weather and a recent study is claiming about the same loss in hot weather. And on long drives you tend to be more heavily loaded than normal, also cutting a few percent off actual range. Further, you need a reserve in case you get stuck on the road for some reason. Also you need a further reserve to ensure you can make it to the next next charger should the next charger be unavailable for some reason. And the advertised ranges are in better-than-average driving conditions at slower-than-average speeds, so you lose another few percent there as well.

All these derates stack which means if you want to ensure low stress in an EV you might have to derate the advertised range 50% or more depending on charger density for long drives when you decide to purchase. ICEs also need derating, but 25% is usually lots and ICEs tend to have much longer ranges to begin with.

Gas cars also have a 15%-24% range decrease in cold weather, and I'd expect similar results for hot weather. I think it's just more notable in EVs because of the higher average range of a gas car.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/gas-powered-cars-lose-driving-r...

In the case of EV pickups, it’s about towing. Towing a 3 ton trailer at highway speeds roughly triples the energy consumption of a pickup truck, so for 200 mile towing range you need 600 miles of unladen highway range.

> Tesla has already come out and said they could make cars that drive twice as far

You actually believed them? Tesla, that has a long track record of lying about what they can do, when they can deliver etc? That is facing major competition from every established car manufacturer who are all shipping vehicles with similar range to Tesla?

If they could release a car with double the distance/capacity they would. It would be a huge competitive advantage that no other manufacturer (except _possibly_ Toyota, if the article is to be believed) can match.

There are cars like the Lucid Air which actually offer significantly more range than even the long range Teslas, while using the same battery tech (at a higher price point of course). They just recently had to scale down production because demand was waaaay below expectations. Tesla's best selling variants are also not the long range models, so it's not surprising that people won't pay for another 30% premium on something they barely ever need.

Actually it wouldn’t be an advantage. It would be a huge sunk cost (and added weight bogging down performance and handling) for a feature that virtually never gets used.

Tesla increases distance ideally by increasing efficiency. Their cars consistently score the best/lowest Wh/mi for their weight, by doing things like designing their own heat pump instead of traditional AC and resistive heating.

Because EV production is virtually always constrained by battery production, the number of cars you can sell is typically your battery production capacity (MWh) divided by your battery capacity per vehicle.

Their inherent efficiency combined with the Supercharger network to support longer trips lets them produce more cars at a lower cost / price.

> You actually believed them? Tesla, that has a long track record of lying about what they can do

This is just basic physics not a conspiracy theory.

It simply doesn't make sense to massively improve distance.

Of course, there is a market for it. Even if you don't have to have it, charging times and rage are the main arguments gas car owners bring up in discussions as a reason for why they don't buy an electric car.

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