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Comment by lordofgibbons | Hacker News Reader

Ever have your phone or laptop not hold the charge it used to when you first bought it? The same thing happens to car batteries. This certainly doesn't help with people's range anxiety.

I'm on the sideline waiting for the battery tech to improve a bit more before buying my next (electric) car.

As an aside, I'm horrified by what new privacy invasive "features" these cars will include in all electric cars.

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Data is a bit light on the ground given we haven't had masses of EVs for all that long. But I wouldn't necessarily have this expectation based off of phones and laptops.

EVs have really high-end battery management systems and cooling, which will have a huge impact on battery life.

Heck even my phone is lasting better these days with just better software battery management in Android. My current oneplus 9 is going on three and a half years old and hasn't notably degraded in battery life. Whereas I'm pretty sure I remember all my previous phones having noticeable battery degradation after a year or so.

>Ever have your phone or laptop not hold the charge it used to when you first bought it?

While true, the analogy is bad. The phones (and to some extent laptops) are notorious of the overcharge. The Li-Ion (cobalt) normally should be charged to 4.22V or so. Tool batteries usually do not go over 4.18V. Yet, the phones are happily pushing 4.35V - which provides longer life per charge initially, plus a proper planned obsolescence later.

EV do proper battery management AND cooling.

At the very extreme end, Apple Watch batteries have a 3.87 V nominal and 4.45 V end of charge voltage. Most lipoly pouch cells would turn into a balloon trying to do that once.

> I'm horrified by what new privacy invasive "features" these cars will include in all electric cars.

My main horror with EVs, particularly Teslas is putting everything on a tablet display in the middle.

Its like it was designed by some kid who's never driven a car.

Its a safety issue, frankly. IMHO.

In many U.S. states using a cell phone while driving is illegal under distracted driving rules. It should be the same for touch screens of all kinds.

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