Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Nowadays, barely any new laptops are released without an SSD.
When it comes to electric versus petrol, I often think about the fact that the sun sends more energy to earth in an hour than all of mankind uses in a year.
I guess that in theory, all that energy could be captured with parts that need no service at all and do not degrade? Of course, we will not practically reach that efficiency. But we will continue to improve towards this limit. When I think of what it takes to dig for oil and all the steps needed to turn that into a moving car, the way we are heading seems clear.
it'd be more like 24 x 365 (and a bit) to match the per hour input to per year usage.
I'm not even sure if driving a car from one city to another really uses energy.
For example, let's look at it this way: The energy from the sun is heating earth. When we use some of it to drive a solar-powered electric car from one city to another, does that lower the temperature of planet earth? I would think it does not. So why did we get the energy to drive the car for free? I would think that the surprising answer is: Moving something from A to B does not use energy at all. But I'm not sure.
There’s this little detail of efficiency. Much less than 100% of energy used for acceleration and overcoming friction is actually spent on those. Most ends up heating up random stuff like engines, brakes, roads and tires.
I’m confused why do you think anything could be moved from A to B for free? You have to charge the car, or fuel it up, after all?
The energy coming from the sun has low entropy and that makes it easy to capture and convert into electricity/plants etc. When you use some of that energy to move a car, you're converting the useful low entropy of the electricity/fuel into high entropy "waste" heat that can no longer be easily captured and used.
Toy ODE model:
dx/dt = -k x + a + b.
Here, x is temperature, a is solar heat input, and b is heat input from human sources. I'm dropping some coefficients that would make the units strictly work. We have a >>> b. The coefficient k says how easily the Earth radiates heat. Adding greenhouse gasses makes k closer to zero.
At equilibrium, dx/dt = 0. Solving,
x = (a + b) / k ~= a / k
Again, b is tiny relative to a. So almost the only thing that matters is k.
We actually spend quite a bit of energy doing the work of moving heat from colder to hotter areas because humans don't like to be too hot.
Say there is a completely static, black planet. All sunlight that hits it is turned into heat which is dissipated into the universe. Nothing moves on that planet.
The static black inhabitants of the planet are very thankful for the sun that it makes their planet nicely warm and cozy.
Now one day, one of them is allowed to travel to planet earth and read Hacker News. He reads this very thread.
Are you telling him that they are wasting half of the benefits they could get from the sun? They could have a nice warm planet AND drive around in electric cars all day? For free? Everything else would stay the same?
If so, doesn't that make driving a car "free" in that it not even increased the amount of entropy? Since the sunlight would have turned into high entropy heat anyhow?
> Are you telling him that they are wasting half of the benefits they could get from the sun? They could have a nice warm planet AND drive around in electric cars all day? For free? Everything else would stay the same?
Strictly speaking, yeah, they're not using all the energy they could. "Wasting" seems like a weird way to say it though, because it feels like that implies they want to be doing something with it.
> If so, doesn't that make driving a car "free" in that it not even increased the amount of entropy? Since the sunlight would have turned into high entropy heat anyhow?
On a long enough timescale nothing matters from the point of view of entropy. Net entropy will always increase. This is a pretty useless observation if you're trying to make a value judgement on the much smaller timescale of a civilization or the much smaller physical system of a planet, where having easily harnessable energy is important.
Fuel being petrol or electric is only a small part of it
A kilogram bar of solid gold is worth about $70K.
Take every atom of that gold and sprinkle them separately into the ocean. You haven’t used any gold: it’s all still there. The difference in value of the bar and the seawater containing the exact same gold is in the arrangement and availability of the gold, not its mere existence.
Same with energy stored in a battery vs stored in slightly warmer atmosphere.
I was comparing a car in city A with a car moved to city B. Both in warm atmosphere. You can heat the atmosphere AND move the car, without creating more entropy than by just heating the atmosphere. So it looks like moving the car does not create entropy / does not use energy.
With the gold, you cannot buy an apartment with it if you sprinkle it in the ocean. You have to decide: Buy an apartment OR sprinkle it in the ocean. You can't get the apartment AND an ocean with gold sprinkles. So you can't get the apartment for free.
So for petrol, sure, if we just had as energy dense batterry as fossile fuels.
No, current tech is not there yet. The big range vechiles are stupidly expensive, and the inexpensive ones are daily commuters only, mostly. They also charge slowly. Most people don't own multiple vechiles for different purposes, the primary purpose of personal vechile is utility and mobility. People get stuck in their personal bubbles and forget that for most people cars are actually a tool.
For batteries, big range drops in winter, no solution for people living in apartments with no capability to "charge at home", high electricity prices at not "charge at home" places.
Please don't bring in hydrogen here :) it's Toyota's pipe dream, not reallity. We really need 3D NAND flash of SSD moment for batteries, that would revolutionize a lot of industries, not just personal vechiles.
Over in the land of desktops, servers, and other stationary computing installations, HDDs are still superior if you do not explicitly require (or want) the fast access speeds and latencies of SSDs which are oftentimes overkill for most use cases.
> We observed the first uptick at the end of October, reaching its peak in the first week of November with price increases in the 80-190% range for desktop drives and 80-150% for mobile units. Although we're beginning to see price reductions across the board, on average drives are still about 60-90% more expensive than they were before the flooding.
https://www.techspot.com/guides/494-hard-drive-pricewatch-th...
With a gas car I am confident I can drive up to any gas station and get fuel with my credit card. I'm not confident I can do the same with electric cars - even if I do find a charge point, I'm worried it's not going to let me pay & charge until I download a stupid app, provide a ton of data to hundreds of data brokers and still remain stranded when all this mess of moving parts breaks down somewhere and doesn't let me proceed.
Indeed. Petrochemicals form a fundamental physical part of all cars. And everything else. I look forward to the innovations that need to replace them.
I feel we’re pushing the electric cars too early on people. The grid is far from being green yet, and the batteries are not that great in terms of efficiency, safety (spontaneous combustion anyone?) and the toll on natural environment. And yet governments are not doing any deeper analysis, and are just ramming those things down people’s throats.
When I think about how I would do a long trip in an EV, I envision getting a full charge, because first, that's what I currently do with gasoline, and second, I want as much range as possible to account for unplanned detours and/or other unexpected issues.
A critical component is the trip computer that knows about upcoming construction and charger status. On our first trip the Sault Ste Marie charger was down, and Sault Ste Marie <-> WaWa is the longest stretch between chargers because of a huge provincial park. But the car warned us about it and told us to make sure we were above 90% at Blind River.
I checked your route with abetterrouteplanner.com using two different Enyaq models. One with 50kW charging and one with 100kW+. Here are the travel times:
- Enyaq iV 50 (50kW charging): 33 hours
- Enyaq iV 80 (100kW charging): 26 hours
- Google Maps (w/o charging time): 22,5 hours
I think you just had the wrong car model for this kind of trip.
Additionally it was during December, so cold weather reduced range even more, therefore your estimation would be correct but for summer time.
I think your car model isn't very appropriate for long distance travels, as most EVs. But there are some EVs out there that definitely can do it, especially all Teslas.
Of course, people who live in car-only suburbs need not apply.
When you a dressed right it ain't bad
Of course higher density parts of the US also don't really match up with the infrastructure that exists in Netherlands, but it's not unreasonable to expect the infrastructure in a given area to scale with the number of people in that area.
You can buy the car and rent the battery. Each time you need to "recharge", you change it.
This is something that governments could solve. Commission a decent swappable battery form-factor and offer tax rebates & incentives to both buyers of compatible vehicles (thus incentivizes manufacturers to make those vehicles) as well as gas stations to adopt the system.
It doesn't have to be perfect performance-wise, if battery swaps take 5 minutes and every gas station supports it, it'll still be good even if the effective range of such battery is half of a custom proprietary one's.
As for long distances, I haven't found that to be a big issue. Of course, I have a Tesla which has a very good charging network - and that's the point. For any brand other than Tesla, you're probably right. It amazes me that the legacy car companies each of which are multiples of Tesla's size don't seem to be able to come up with a solution that doesn't involve getting taxpayers involved.
If every gas station supported CCS it would be less of an issue, but usually you need to find a station nearby and wait for 20-40 minutes if it's CCS or 6-8 hours if it's level 2.
It's not as bad as it sounds, or I'm lying to myself, but having the 90 minute planned stops makes a cross country trip seem a lot closer ... even though it's doing the opposite.
There are 1.88 vehicles per household in the US so it seems like many American households could have one of those vehicles be an EV while the other is gasoline for longer trips if they need that functionality so badly.
The range anxiety thing is so overblown, too. Driving 300 miles at 60mph average is 5 full hours of driving. That’s so much.
If you assume that EVs are barely doing 200 miles of real condition range that’s still over 3 hours of driving before you need to stop at all.
And then if you are going much longer than 500 miles it starts to make more sense to fly in the US. For a family of four you can’t make a trip from Ohio to Orlando make financial sense in a car, like, at all. The airfare is too low and the car travel time is too high.
That's why you see so many expensive cars driven by people who can't afford them. No one is paying the up-front cost. They splurge their disposable income on a motor and treat it like a mobile phone - upgrade it every few years.
A VW eUP (an electric vehicle) is about £200pcm. The new Mini is about £300pcm. Those are comparable with ICE vehicles.
I was discussing cars with someone not long ago and they were really matter-of-fact about switching to a new car just because the dealership offered it to them. It came across very much as that’s just how it works and everyone does that.
£300 per month to basically not have to worry about any unexpected bills seems reasonable to me.
Plus you get the social value of having a "nice" car. The safety features are likely to be higher quality. And, as mentioned in the article, newer vehicles tend to be more efficient.
Basically, it is a fairly rational way to spend money.
what the people have done informally is something similar.
1. person "buys" a car and Hypothecates the same to a bank for paying the car dealer. usually 80-90-100% of the car value can be paid by bank meaning 0-10-20% of the car value can be given as deposit.
2. now that the new "owner" has taken the car, they start making monthly EMI payments to bank.
3. 1 year or 2 years from purchase, the owner wants to "sell" the car so what they do is, find a buyer willing to accept the outstanding loan amount.
4. the first "owner" has paid 2 things. 1 deposit and say 12 months of EMI.
5. first "owner" tells the buyer that "here, take hold of these future EMI entries and give me a portion of the amount i have paid till now as in #4"
6. the first "owner" takes cheques each dated monthly in future with the amount from the buyer which the first "owner" will deposit every month and if there is any failure, claim default in payment of cheque.
7. car remains in title of the first owner and Hypothecated by bank until last EMI is paid at which point the first owner "transfers" the car to new owner
Everyone I know driving 100k+ 10y+ cars from reliable manufacturers have no issues beyond regular maintenance.
My father's Benz certainly spends more time in the shop though.
I did this and now I'm stuck with manual Kia... But I don't really drive enough to care, so I'm fine...
Of course we realise we're paying for depreciation but I consider a car to be a fixed expense and honestly if you take a look at the numbers above it's not that bad and we drive a new, safe, no issues (free servicing) car every 3-4 years.
Driving a new car every few years is incredibly decadent.
If you bought a car, paid it off in 5 years and drove it for another 10, you’d be saving thousands every year. Repeat that cycle every 15 years and invest the savings, and you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in trade-off costs over the course of a lifetime. That might be a reasonable trade-off for folks who are in great shape financially (I’ll certainly be doing it once retirement is funded!), but it’s pure foolishness for the average household.
What about maintenance? There's a lot of moving parts (often the labor to get to the part costs more than the part itself) and a stroke of bad luck can quickly balloon into 4-digit sums.
Paying a flat monthly fee for transport sounds like an attractive option to not have to worry about any of that.
If one lacks the rainy-day savings to afford a hypothetical thousand-dollar repair bill, one certainly cannot afford to throw away thousands of dollars every year “to not have to worry” about one’s precarious finances.
There are plenty of people who live near paycheck-to-paycheck who also need a car to get to work, where a stroke of bad luck like engine + transmission damage would not only be a significant financial hit but the downtime of the car being unavailable might compound the problem as they can't get to work.
While it's not a great financial situation and ideally nobody should be in it, in reality these people don't have a choice and budgeting away a fixed percentage of their salary on a vehicle that guarantees them to be able to get to work (to pocket the remaining percentage of salary) is a better option than not paying a monthly fee but gambling on the fact that a significant breakdown might completely wipe them out financially and jeopardize the transportation they use to get to work.
It's a bit like insurance - technically it should always be cheaper to self-insure, but insurance exists because for many people perpetually paying the premium is still better than a single event wiping them out completely.
This makes sense so long as it isn't used as an argument for leasing a new car on an ongoing basis. If one actually finds themselves in this situation, the responsible approach would be to find the cheapest possible lease and to save aggressively until they can take the more economical approach.
Leasing is like credit card debt. It makes sense in some rare cases, but in most cases it is wasteful and the average consumer should avoid it.
How is it possible to keep possession of the car if you’re not paying the contractual obligation? Is there some exception for cars?
For example, failing to keep up with mortgage payments will eventually see you lose the property.
Let's say a car costs $50,000 and Joe wants to finance it (because he either doesn't have $50,000 or just doesn't want to spend $50,000 right now), so he gets a $50,000 loan to buy it. Let's also say the loan will mature in 10 years, also obviously the loan has interest but we don't need a specific number for this conversation.
The minimum payment per month will be set such that Joe will pay off the loan in 10 years, and Joe presumably can afford the loan's minimum monthly payments since he accepted it to buy that new car.
If Joe wants to pay off the loan sooner and he can afford it, he can just pay more than the minimum due during a given month.
So Joe gets a loan from a bank (oftentimes middleman'd by the dealership), the bank pays the dealer in full, Joe gets his car, the bank becomes the lienholder on the car until the loan is paid off.
Imagine a car that costs 50,000 - a 10 year loan will be 500 or so per month according to https://www.calculator.net/auto-loan-calculator.html.
If I want to buy a car and lease it out to make money, but charge half that much so people who can't afford it can still get it, then let's say I charge 250/month. It would take 17 years of leasing it at the rate that it was worth when it was new in order to just break even and get my outlay on the car back.
So it's possible that I'm missing something else key about how car loans work but the numbers don't seem to add up for the leasor that your market is people who can't afford a car loan. Even https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/lease-vs-buy-calcu... seems to indicate that you pay a little less for the loan than leasing, so I'm still not getting how leasing is the budget option that helps people get a car they can't otherwise afford a loan for.
EDIT: the answer is here: https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/car-finance-pcp-explained/. Apparently in the UK, leases work with a small monthly payment, but at the end of the lease term there's a gigantic balloon payment where you pay back the difference between your cheap payments until then and what you actually would have owed if you had a normal lease or loan the whole time - thus making the leasor whole. The system is designed such that the leasor will always have received the cost of depreciation (plus more) at any point in the term.
With a loan, the buyer pays off the principal and interest and absorbs any discrepancy between the resale value and the remaining debt. With a lease, the lessor absorbs the discrepancy as long as the consumer meets the other stipulations of the lease, such as mileage limits and maintenance. The lessor acts almost like an insurer to charge fees and absorb this risk across a whole fleet of cars.
An easier to understand example would be how most people finance iPhones with their carrier. Most people balk at paying one or two grand for a phone, but don't mind paying ~$50 per month. At the end of the loan when they pay off the balance, or maybe even before that if the carrier offers, they upgrade to the next new iPhone.
I won’t buy a new phone let alone a new car.
Buying used is rolling the dice on whether I end up with a Hangar Queen demanding attention I don't want to give.
Time is money, as the saying goes. Buying new is more expensive, but it's cheaper in the long run with the time and money I did not have to waste on unexpected upkeep.
It depends. We tend to buy three year old cars and on the whole they have all the niggles resolved by then. After that they don't start having problems until at least 100,000 miles. So we pay half the price for no extra aggravation.
My certified preowned car actually came with slightly more miles and a slightly longer manufacturer warranty than a new model would have.
Down payment x000
Monthly payment for x months x00
And then final payment xx000 after x months. But the seller has calculated it as such that they can buy it back and get the more by selling it.
So in the end "buyer" only pays for the depreciation and interest, which were low in previously. Much harder model now that cost of loaning has gone up. Quite a lot of people can afford to pay hundreds a month, even if that really doesn't make long term sense...
There are certainly pros to electric cars, but as yet price is not one.
Until and if that day comes, then yes. But right now it's no. Speculation is speculation.
ICE is fundamentally too complex. The primary issue in EV is battery tech, and that is advancing so rapidly with so much investment that the 5 year roadmap of CATL and others already addresses almost all the issues, and there’s a ton of wildcard battery tech looming with intense interest.
There’s nothing on the roadmap on ICE. There is no roadmap, just entrenched interests.
BYD, MG, and other Chinese EV makers are already eating ICE makers alive in Asia and creeping into Europe. Nothing about EV is necessarily expensive - they’re very simple devices, no part is exotic, and most of the current price is baked into fit and finish plus heavy margins.
ICE cars are genuinely amazing machines of precision mastery. They’re complex and difficult to make. The only reason they’re cheap is scale and long established supply chains. But if you reduced their complexity by 80-90% like with an EV, the scale and maturity of supply chain required to overtake ICE is not 25 years to establish. It’s more like 3-4.
Regardless of supply chain maturity and so on, I think you are wrong that the average family is less than 4 years away from a new car though.
Offer me an Hyuandai N74 and we'll talk.
Seriously, their designs are nearly all terrible compared to gas/diesel cars.
But Teslas look like cars to me, so I think the era of “it’s electric so it has to look weird” is at its end.
The Prius looks dull because it's tuned for ultimate efficiency while also paying a small roofline/footprint penalty for its battery in aesthetics. It would be interesting to see what a max efficiency ICE Prius would be like. I bet it could do high 30's mpg, maybe even 40, would look better, and be substantially cheaper.
VW cut prices of ID.3 down to $16,500 in China, while in Europe the same vehicle starts at nearly $43,000: https://www.arenaev.com/volkswagen_cuts_id3_price_in_china__...
China reveals just how bad things are for Toyota, GM and VW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBV9FQvuss
In US, there are good deals to be found. I have a Nissan Leaf on a 2 year lease at $99/month. In the past decade, there were so many who took advantage of $69 - $89/month lease + additional cash back from state/utility/air quality rebates. Folks could buy them from 6K - 10K at the end of the lease. These deals may not be around anymore, but there are leases always available under 300. I see 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 6 for $229 and several others under $300: https://insideevs.com/features/410039/best-electric-car-deal...
Almost no-one I know owns a new car regardless of their income bracket. 5-10 years old is the norm. Many have cars that are just on the cusp of the emissions regulations (approx 15-20 year old petrol car in London).
A car that costs 3K is perfectly serviceable, you can drive across the country with it. I don't think I could find an electric car with even a 200 mile range for less than five times that.
Since the Ukraine war electricity has been more expensive than petrol too.
But that comparison would be more fair if I will compare with used Tesla. Not too many around though.
I heard that a lot, but are we sure about this?
Petrol in Europe is taxed at about 50%, but is almost exclusively imported, thus this is the only income for gouvernements.
Electricity, on the other side, is also taxed (about 25% here in Belgium). But's it's almost entirely produced in the Union, which creates additional income and thus taxes. In the end the government income generated by electricity production is most probably around 50% too.
Add to that the external costs of petrol cars that electric cars don't have (at least not as much), such as the huge impact of pollution on the healthcare sector, climate change, or the negative import balance caused by the import of fossil fuel... And it might well be that electric vehicles will be a better deal overall tax wise.
Here in the UK, there's a lot of drivers who believe that road tax exists (not since 1937) and whilst there's a similar concept with VED (Vehicle Excise Duty), it's not used used specifically for fixing roads - that comes from general taxation.
Due to the misinformation, we sometimes get EV drivers complaining about cyclists because "they don't pay road tax", whereas EV owners don't even pay VED as it's based on tailpipe emissions. This means that cyclists (and pedestrians etc) are in effect subsidising the heavy vehicle drivers and helping to pay for the damage that heavy vehicles cause to the roads (roughly proportional to the fourth power of weight of the vehicle).
I know many people pay way more for cars, even buying ones they can’t afford with loans, but most of the people I know aren’t in that group.
I go for older cars because they tend to actually be more reliable, and the plus side is they’re cheaper.
I’m presuming “ICE” means internal combustion engine?
There's some cars that look like they're in 'decent' condition under $5k, but they again have >150k miles almost universally. Likely in need of some pretty expensive maintenance somewhat soon at that mileage.
I bought a car for $2k that was decent and <100k miles around 10 years ago, but those days are long over as far as I can tell.
And yes, ICE = internal combustion engine.
CATL are talking about their LFP batteries having a life of 1,000,000km (600,000 miles). Given enough time there will be plenty of budget options. In the mean time you can keep buying cheap cars.
Its not just volume production the materials in the batteries are driving a lot of the high price. You can get a second hand Zoe for £4-5k but they are quite limited in range. A full range EV for £12k is going to be a big deal.
I'm not ready yet. I'll be more for plug-in cars in a 5-years span.
Besides if you just car about the economics and not the potential reduction on the planet they are still cheaper to run over their lifetime compared to petrol.
The two things don’t add up, on one hand you have people claiming renewables are cheaper than ever, on the other you have skyrocketing electric bills. If renewables don’t actually decrease energy prices for consumers then claiming it’s cheaper is misleading.
Last time I looked in this corner of Europe, it takes about 3-6 months to get an appointment to install solar and/or an electric heat pump. Installers can't keep up with demand, and they can't train new people faster than they're already doing.
That definitely isn't happening because the gas alternatives are so cheap.
Energy prices are high not because people are converting. They're high because of the shock caused by the (then) sudden unexpected war in Ukraine, and people simply can't convert fast enough.
What senile, old, corrupt and/or stupid politicians decide isn't necessarily the rational choice, and in fact is often the opposite.
Mismanagement shouldn't be seen as a failure or a flaw of the underlying technology.
For example, these smirking German assholes, who I would have enjoyed seeing being interviewed last winter after Russia knocked the dumb smirks off their faces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg
/s,
Floridian
I'm curious how that market develops. I'm pessimistic about "Car 2.0" for a couple reasons
First, a chance to redefine the idea of what owning a car is. For example, subscriptions to use induction heaters that you already pay to power.
Second, the battery. They're consumable and a considerable size of the value.
I'm not sure their market would remain
I've driven too many four cylinders that I legitimately have a complex over how my car sounds. I'm driving my V8 until I can't anymore
My Dacia has cost me €4500 when it was brand new 14 years ago and I'm still driving it.
In my opinion electric cars are too expensive, yeah :)
They are cars. They do the same shit, take you from point A to point B. That's the definition of competing with each other.
Also, most of this world isn't made up by overpaid Valley developers but people who care about cost.
I'm buying the cheapest, couldn't give a fuck that it's electric if it costs more. And like me there are billions.
Note that it's not 20k but another 1k. For that €1000 which is a rounding error in the price of a new car, I can find lots of second-hand cars that will work just fine and have far greater autonomy than the electric one: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/vand-dacia-logan-2006-IDhOqJI.ht...
I only know one guy that has an electric car, that BMW, for which he actually only paid half, the other was some sort of aid program for companies (he owns one). He also owns a regular BMW and says the quality is far superior, and convenience and autonomy wise they cannot be compared.
So for €40,000 he bought an expensive toy because he can afford it but for serious business, driving hundreds of Km in one go, quick refill, comfort, he uses the gas-based car. Just think that besides driving from point A to point B in the winter you also need heating and in the summer cooling. The battery autonomy falls dramatically if you use them. Then there's charging time which is a major inconvenience compared with time to refill.
I’m living in my mom’s basement for free.
In my opinion houses are too expensive.
Throw in a few solar panels and you have a low tax, low tco car or second car.
https://thedriven.io/2023/04/27/tesla-model-3-total-cost-of-...
I still own a quite old (12 years, but low mileage) petrol car, because I don't drive a lot and really only need it for errands in my city. In this scenario it's very hard to justify buying an almost new electric car. The used ones available on the market right now are still not very attractive in my opinion.
Surprise surprise, quality of materials per dollar isn’t always what guides buying decisions.
If that was the case, brands like Lincoln, Jeep, Dodge, and Maserati would be gone by now.
This is probably why Tesla emphasizes speed and performance in its marketing, because it is a spec where EVs are very price competitive. If you’re a young man who wants a fast car (a pretty common desire in that demographic) you’ll have a hard time finding gas cars as cheap as a Model 3 that can get to 60MPH in 3 seconds.
That means having an electrical grid that can support charging millions of cars every night, having sufficient charging stations that you don't have to queue up to access one, having sufficient charging stations that you can be assured of finding enough of them through rural, regional or desert areas. In other words, everywhere an ICE can go should be where an EV car can go. We are not at that level yet.
Oh. And the cost. Still far too high to be economical.
Thanks a lot Thrifty. Not going to rent from you again until you fix your electric car return policies.
I find daily an EV much nicer as the driving is more silent, more smooth, the car is warmer faster, you don’t need to go to the oil and gas station once a while if you can charge at home or at work.
And the torque curve and the response time are so much better than all the car enthousiastes ICE cars in a similar price range.
I ultimately abandoned my endeavor because none of the vehicles provided 2 key things older cars continue to provide: Ownership, and Privacy. And key to this is that this isn't just electric cars, it's pretty much all modern cars. My Civic had a replaceable stereo headunit. How many modern cars have the infotainment system so embedded that functions of the cars depend on it? And we know car manufactures take advantage of that. Hell, even judges seem ok with them doing that [1]. Then you have the fact that repairing anything in the car is made not only intentinally obtuse, but illegal is some states. As it stands right now in oklahoma, you can do any work you want on your gas vehicle, but move to electric and you better have a $5,000 yearly certificate to touch that. Simply opening the hood can land you in jail. And we know the car manufacturers can tattle on you [2]. Then there's the fact that these cars are more than capable of moving themselves. And that system is tied to a remote service. Absolutly nothing stops a manufacturer from deciding that your car's "drive train control system" is no longer licensed, and simply shut it down. Permanently. If companies are willing and able to steal your media [3], the next step is easily to just brick your appliances. Hell, microwaves are already doing that [4]. Trains do that if you decide a third party repair station is reasonable [5]. Where does this end?
Point being, till I can truly own my vehicle again, I'm sticking with older cars. I would much rather own an electric vehicle, but so far none of them are even remotely close to being something I can actually own. Price has nothing to do with it. [1] https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/11/judge-rules-i... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/07/tesla-int... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/02/playstatio... [4] https://hackaday.com/2022/03/18/welcome-to-the-future-where-... [5] https://hackaday.com/2023/12/06/the-deere-disease-spreads-to...
I’m gonna need sources that you actually cannot repair an EV yourself. Parts sourcing may be difficult, and I’m sure there’s some certification you need as a mechanic to work on high voltage systems in some states, but the vast vast majority of work on EVs is boring normal stuff like brakes, fluids, etc. Nobody is getting thrown in jail for opening the hood on their own car, that’s ridiculous.
Also, nobody is bricking anyone’s car. If you’re that paranoid about remote access, it’s possible to just remove the cell access. It’s certainly possible on Tesla’s, it’s even an unlisted option when ordering.
It does read paranoid, because the whole things should be ridiculous in a sane world. That's part of the problem. This shouldn't even be a concern, but it is.
> I'm gonna needs source...
Unfortunately the source is to read through Oklahoma Statute 40-142, since it's a fairly interwoven and long document that establishes what Alternate Fuel Technicians must do to be certified, what vehicles must be serviced by said technicians, and what the consequences are for violating those requirements. Of note, the statute calls out EVs as falling under the statue requirements, and what your allowed to modify is a (short) list of exceptions, rather than a list of restrictions. There's no single line to point to, as is true for a lot of law stuff.
> Also, nobody is bricking anyone's car. If you're that paranoid about remote access, it's possible to just remove the cell access.
First, please read the last 3 references of my previous comment. There is a clear and present pattern of increased removal of access via remote updates. Furthermore, removing that cell access hampers the car significantly, with no allowed alternative. The option is to let them listen, or watch your infotainment system be effectively paralyzed. I would be happy with an option to simply swap out the infotainment with something else, like I did with my 2002 Honda Civic, but it's their system or nothing. Plus, it takes one trip to the repair shop, which must be a first-party repair shop, since no one else is allowed access to the needed codes to reset the computers, for something to be updated without my consent, and a feature (or the whole car) to be bricked "for your safety". It need not even be that involved. Again, the above train example used geo-fencing to decide when to brick the train. no remote connection needed.
This isn't just a matter of can I hobble a car enough to not abuse me. It's about what part of the car do I really own. Am I allowed to modify it? Are enough of the systems cryptographically secured to, in-practice, prevent me from changing something like a break-pad? Will I need to completely replace the engine computer to swap out the music app?
Right now the answer is that the car isn't mine, and I'm not allowed to make changes. Not in practice, and not in principle.
Also, you're citing multiple unrelated things to actual cars here. Sure, I agree, that remote access/updates can be used maliciously. No doubt.
In actual practice though, what car prevents you from changing brake pads yourself? What car has ACTUALLY been 'bricked for your safety' ? This is hysteria not backed by reality. You can do maintenance on your own car, and I don't see that going away any time soon. Sure, some companies (BMW seems to love to do this...) make it extremely hard to pull diagnostic codes, but there is nobody bricking your car for changing out the infotainment system.
In a Zoe, there is no coolant to change, it's an integrated heat pump system for humans and propulsion system.
There is very little maintenance a home gamer can do on it, alas.
Coolant... sure there's less coolant, but there still is coolant, it's just usually for cooling the battery and motors and not the engine. Most are lifetime fill, although most gas engines have >100k mile coolant change intervals already.
What maintenance are you suggesting even needs to be done? Tire changes/rotations, cabin air filter changes... there isn't much else you even need to do.
EVs are awaiting an unforseen tech solution to their expense.
If you commute from the suburbs, maybe not.
It’s difficult to reduce your life quality unless you are forced. I don’t see country side people giving up their cars.
I feel like this is a planning conversation for before the era when they decided to make US planning completely car centric and isolating, in a manner that can't be easily nor quickly reversed in a real way.
It would also make sense if there's a plan to reduce the amount of traffic because the road is used for through traffic both way which makes residents in the neighborhoods being forced to wait a long time before they're able to enter the road safely.
There's also a gas station much nearer, but it's not very easy to bike there. Walking there can get your shoes very muddy. There are also offices building nearby too, but once again, it's not very easy to get there on foot or bike.
This is all within my local suburban context, but it's not easy to do when large stroad make it difficult to cross relatively short distance, or when protected bike lanes and sidewalks are extremely lacking, or when crossing the road is a dangerous activity or when getting to your local gas station might get your shoes muddy and wet.
They can if said bike is an e-cargo bike.
I’ve seen people driving their car to the supermarket <1km away for a handful of shopping, which is obviously bonkers. Then again, you sometimes need to drive somewhere or be cut off, which leads to poor mental health and quality of life.
But yes, you're right. If you design exclusively around the car then not using a car becomes very awkward. Also, without any meaningful public transport, the suburbs also lock in car usage.
However, car usage is only really practical up to a certain density of people due to their poor space usage. When you get more people using cars, you need more roads and car parking space. This tends to separate the various amenities to fit in all the extra space, which then means that more people will need a car to travel to them due to the extra distance. That leads to yet more roads and more separation of the shops etc. until you reach a point where there's massive congestion at popular times. However, building more roads leads to induced demand and even more congestion, when the actual solution is to move facilities closer to where people live/work so that they're not forced into driving everywhere.
The US is wildly low-density outside of the major metros. It's one of the better things about this Nation.
Conversely, the very dense portions are built for cars and facilities are relatively close but still require a car to reach on the whole.
I live an a very dense major urban area, just outside of the city limits, and there isn't a single walkable store that isn't a convenience store with a gas station, a drug store, a rare butcher, a bar, a liquor store, a beer distributor, a tobacco store, a laundromat, and a pizza shop that serves bad food. And most of those aren't a short walk, though I need none of them aside from the butcher.
The grocery store and anything else absolutely requires a car. The trend isn't toward more such facilities, but less. Social (crime) and economic pressures are causing the food desert to expand. I know people who live 3/4 further away from me, across dense urbanity (which is a lot to travel, especially for older people), who need to travel to the suburban food store that I go to. There isn't space between it and them to build another grocery store. Less adaptable and more vulnerable stores have closed.
I agree that there is a limit to dense usability given any metric, but the dense areas are already designed. There isn't an option to redesign them as they represent vast expanses of residential homes. I don't see exurban areas filling in any time soon, especially given fuel / electric costs and economic pressures in addition to higher interest rates that will slow residential construction for the forseeable future. Also, they are truly vast.
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2020/10/car-fleet-growing-fast...
To steal a famous youtube channel's title: it's Not Just Bikes.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k "The Best Country In The World For Drivers" (This might be a slight exaggeration to get more youtube clicks? Who knows! But it tells the story ok)
The FUD about mining is pure big oil propaganda, frankly.
Also once lithium is extracted, it carries energy thousands of times before it needs to be recycled to work thousands of times more and so on.
Oil/coal carries the energy ONCE and then it's unmitigated pollution.
And you are right that this is about 4 BILLION tons annually.
Here is data until 2021. http://www.world-mining-data.info/?World_Mining_Data___Data_...
Yeah, touch interfaces is a disease on most modern vehicles (but especially electric).
The infrastructure is the weakest link after the raw material chain required to build them. Oh, and recycling/disposal.
The oil infrastructure must be dismantled as fast as possible. Recycling of batteries is a chicken-egg problem : it's ramping up, but is necessarily lagging behind EV market penetration. It's an eminently solvable problem -- lead batteries are recycled way over 95% already.
Remember : a vehicle lasts about 12 to 14 years. in 2035 (12 years), our fossil fuel consumption must have been reduced drastically compared to now. Buying any sort of ICE vehicle today is really, really hard to justify.
Tens of millions of people, and possibly more, see this argument as low credibility. Meaning, that the argument for EVs should probably be made according to their inherent merits and not climate arguments.
Put another way, I'd be careful about tangling up the EV push in divisive climate politics. As one is arguably likely to taint EVs in the minds of the public, leading to ever greater pushback in regard to their adoption. Don't underestimate public response to being told that they have to change their lifestyle because of hotly debated assertions. No matter whether or not you think they should be debated.
Yes they do: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2022/RCLRPT-22V346-3365.PDF
> Risk of underhood fire, including while the vehicle is parked and off.
It also wasn't that long ago that a diesel car that was parked and switched off spontaneously caught fire and wrote off an entire multi-storey car park at Luton Airport, so there's an anecdote for all.
That's not to say that problems with the Bolt weren't serious but they are not representative of the EV market as a whole.