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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

“We don’t have the infrastructure” is a temporary problem. The same could have been said about gas stations and the electrical grid capacity needed for widespread air conditioning.

Weight isn’t such a crazy thing either. The Tesla Model Y long range weighs 900 pounds more than a Honda CRV. It’s a lot, but the most popular car in America is the Ford F-150 which weighs about the same as a Model Y at the low end.

The weight efficiency can only improve from here and more charging infrastructure and faster recharge times will mean less demand for long range variants. This is ideal for electrics because shorter frequent stops are more time efficient for EVs while for gas vehicles it’s the opposite.

The great thing about electricity is that it’s even easier to transport and generate than liquid fuel storage. Generation can be centralized with a diverse set of energy sources.

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> The weight efficiency can only improve from here

I don’t think this is a given. I can imagine plenty of future battery tech that is much more physically dense, and also more energy-dense, but with an overall mass that’s heavier than what we have now. Consumers really want more range, and they don’t really care about their car’s weight so long as it isn’t prohibitive. (They will definitely care collectively as the roads deteriorate faster and they have to pay more in tax dollars and wasted time spent in construction to repair them, but that will end up being a tragedy of the commons.)

> They will definitely care collectively as the roads deteriorate faster and they have to pay more in tax dollars and wasted time spent in construction to repair them, but that will end up being a tragedy of the commons

The difference in wear between a 3600 pound RAV4 and a 4400 pound Model Y is so minor that it'll disappear in the noise. Nobody will notice. The only time it'll even come close to mattering is on residential streets that never see any commercial trucks. And even then, nobody cares now about the 6500 pound HD pickups that are so popular, so I can't see why that would suddenly become an issue.

I mean, if we’re picking models to support our points, I’d counter with the Hummer EV which is 9,630 lbs. Road wear goes up with the 4th power of weight, so doubling the weight increases road wear 16x… it’s not something we should just ignore.

> if we’re picking models to support our points, I’d counter with the Hummer EV

I picked the Model Y, which has outsold every other non-pickup vehicle except the RAV4, and it's really close to the RAV4 numbers. It's a good comparison.

How many Hummers has GM sold this year? Couple hundred? That's three orders of magnitude fewer than the Model Y, the Hummer is irrelevant.

You’re absolutely right and I don’t disagree at all, but what worries me is the mindset that produced the Hummer. It feels a lot like GM started with a constraint of “Americans like larger vehicles”, then added “Americans want long range”, then told the engineers to make it happen, and the result is something that weighs 4.35 metric tons. The fact that weight itself didn’t seem to be a constraint guiding the design is worrisome to me, and is a sign that we can expect more superheavy vehicles like these in the future.

I would counter that by saying that the Hummer EV is an exotic car that is not going to be widely available and isn’t intended to be sold in high volume.

GM sold 272 of them last year and only 47 this year.

It’s basically a halo car and technological showcase.

That Hummer also does 0-60 in 3 seconds. Imagine the amount of damage it can do just going all out from traffic lights and crashing into someone...

It's like someone took America and distilled it into an EV :D

That car cannot be legally driven in Europe on a B license due to its weight. Phew.

If only we had that kind of sanity in the US… the electric hummer is an absolute monstrosity and should never have been made IMO. I am a supporter of EV’s but, I am increasingly skeptical that legacy US automakers will ever “get it” when it comes to efficiency, and it’s not surprising at all to end up with monster vehicles like the EV hummer. But I do admit the American consumer shares as much of the blame by demanding such large (in size, if not necessarily weight) vehicles in the first place. It’s like GM said “we need an SUV at least this big, and we need at least this much range. Engineers said it’ll weigh 10,000 lbs? Fuck it, nobody will notice, ship it.”

The Hummer is a toy. It sells in toy numbers, and has toy impact on society. It's a distraction. The most popular EVs are just like the most popular ICEVs -- crossovers.

I’m already on board with the urbanist camp that believes car-focused infrastructure is economically and environmentally unsustainable. EVs don’t help the American addiction to stroads and strip malls.

I just happen to also believe that EVs are no worse than the status quo and are almost certainly at least marginally better than any other alternative on the table.

Is range really an issue if you can easily find charging spot and recharge in less than 15min?

It is in the mind of consumers, yes (I have not offered my personal opinion and don’t want to, as it’s irrelevant to the point.) There has been a lot of consumer studies on this and range anxiety is a very real thing.

Weight is an air pollution problem - tires and brake pads release fines during normal usage. Regenerative braking helps, but only so much.

https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/145/1/98/1627384

Electricity is easy to transport but very hard to store and it's the storage that's the problem, see batteries.

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